The woman who outpaced me at 71

Margaret texted me Thursday morning: ‘Do you have Sunday free? I want to show you something.’ That was it. No other context. I’ve learned not to ask Margaret for more context — she delivers the full picture in person, always better than whatever you imagined. So Sunday morning I picked her up at eight and she directed me north with the calm authority of someone who has known exactly where she’s going her entire life. Two and a half hours later: Pemaquid Point. The lighthouse. The Atlantic spread out in front of us like she’d arranged it herself.

The woman who outpaced me at 71

Here’s what I was not expecting: Margaret Wu, 71, neat silver bun, wire-rimmed glasses, in her sensible walking shoes — to absolutely leave me behind on the last rocky scramble up to the overlook. I was picking my way across the granite trying not to roll an ankle and she was already up there, hands on her hips, surveying the ocean like she owned it. I laughed so hard I almost did roll my ankle. She turned around and said, ‘I’ve been walking on rocks since before you were born, Elena.’ And that was that.

She found a flat rock and just… sat down. And honestly? Best decision either of us made all day.

We sat on a flat rock near the water for probably forty minutes just talking. Not about the archive — or not mostly. She told me about the first time her late husband brought her here, back in the eighties, how they packed sandwiches in a paper bag and got completely lost finding the parking. How she came back every few years after he passed, just to sit on this same rock. I didn’t say much. Sometimes the thing that matters is just being the person someone chooses to bring. I’ve been so deep in binders and contact sheets and the logistics of coordinating three new families into the archive network that I forgot what all of it is actually for. Margaret reminded me on a flat piece of granite with the ocean in front of us. She’s good at that. I’m going to be insufferable about this friendship for the foreseeable future and I have zero regrets.