A Toast to Joan Peterson, 1940-2025

Me (L) with Joan Peterson, July 2024
                                                photo by Beate Foit

    One of the poems in Joan Peterson's book of poetry, Looking for a Place to Write, is about getting a massage from her granddaughter, Haley. In the poem Joan talks about holding Haley when she was a baby, and now she, Joan, is in Haley's arms. The last lines read, 

            My daughter's daughter, you rock 

            me in your arms like a tiny child.

            You may carry me to the end of my life

            as I learn to let go.

    Last week Joan had a massage from Haley, then walked down the steps and let go of her life. She died before she got to her car.

        She was 84 years old.

    So I have, again, lost my best friend (Mike, Maren, …). For almost the whole of the 50 years I have lived in the Applegate, Joan has been my friend and closest good-friend neighbor. She was whom I would call to come up and have lunch,

Joan (L) with her granddaughter and my friend Maren,
at my house for lunch, 2010

to go to a concert, to ride with me to a meeting, or to meet the Tea Ladies for tea.  

Joan (L) with me (R) and the other tea ladies. 2019

    For ten years, Joan; her husband, Chris; three other friends, and I met monthly to share lunch and read poetry together. We called ourselves the Grayback Salon.

The Grayback Salon at my house, 2015
L-R: Me, Tracy Lamblin, Joan, Chris, Dan Lamblin
(Greeley Wells, is taking the picture)

    Joan started the Applegate Poets and urged me to join. She started the Friends of the Applegate Library and pulled me in, too. She offered me a membership in the Sierra Club if I would join the board, starting my ten years of service there. She started Voices of the Applegate, a singing group in the Applegate (which, no, she never talked me into joining). She was a beautiful singer; she and Chris, sang together at many gatherings. And she was a very good poet. When I am missing Joan now, I can go to her poems, where she is as alive as ever.

Joan reading her poetry at Britt Gardens,
in Jacksonville, Oregon, 2021

    Joan was magic with the animals on her farm—dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, goats, and, especially, the horses. When my son, Ela, was small, we had a horse, Baby Dee, whom we boarded at Joan's farm in exchange for stall-cleaning. 

    Once when Ela was little and while I didn't have a car, we walked the five miles down the road to Joan's house on Christmas Day for a drop-in visit, the way people in the country used to do. The house was full of merriment—people, food, drink, and song. We added poetry and puppets. It is a memory I have cherished for years. 

    Joan and I both taught in the English Department at Rogue Community College. We hiked together and skied together. We talked about books and poetry, about family and students, about teaching class and making cookies, about rough times and happy times. We were with each other in sympathy when our respective husbands died.

    Joan was such a close friend for so many years. She was a wonderful person and an important community member, and she had a talent for making many people—certainly I was one—think they were her best friend.  And for our particular friendship, that was true.