Barb

Barb drives a white van. It’s good for moving things. People. Ideas. Furniture for friends.

She wears a mumu on a very thin frame -- the kind of mumu Tracy Ellis Ross pulls off today.

She’s obviously growing out her bangs. Hoping to teach them to go to the sides for that “curtain” look all of the younger girls are going on about.

Winged cat-eye glasses and very trendy silver hair make a double-take necessary. How old is she?

She gave up smoking a few months ago.

Normal 60’s childhood. Raised by Republicans. Loving, but fairly narrow-minded. Acceptable and expected for the time.

Stayed on the straight and narrow during college.

But Korea and then ‘Nam really wrecked her mentally. Exhausted her emotionally.

Then she discovered Studio 54. Or maybe, just maybe ... it discovered HER.

The sex was new.

And good.

So good.

Then she found out the drugs made it even better.

She changed her name. Highbiscus.

Her parents didn’t know her anymore. She didn’t care.

Her brother ran for Congress. He totally ignored her. The press never connected her to him.

Fine by her. She would make headlines with Karl Lagerfeld. The Feinsteins. ALL of the ‘Stones.

But none more so than the Queen before Beyoncé. The original Queen Bee: Bette. Fucking. Midler.

At first, they partied.

A lot.

More booze. More drugs. The fashion. The sex. The groupies. Lines blurred. Worlds changed. Paradigms forever shifted.

And when it all blew up, Bette was the only one still there.

The day Bette walked away from her, she wore a Halston mumu.

Clutching her coffee cup in the early-morning light, her world blown to bits by the words she’d heard.

“We’re no good for one another. I’m headed to New York. Please have your things gone when I return.”

She’d followed Bette all over the country—the WORLD. Shit, Bette WAS her world. Now what?

Standing poolside overlooking the Canyon, she felt her mind drain as though a tap had been opened. All of it. Everything. Just .... gone.

A few months at the Beverly Wilshire, trying to feel as though nothing had changed. Cabana boys. Bar girls. Guys with cars. Guys with promises. Chicks with drugs. They all had booze. But none of them filled that void. Nothing and everything had changed.

North, then.

North where the pines met the coast in a misty, mysterious, beautiful dream.

North where the hippies, burned out on being angry, had migrated to have their children, grow their crops, and live in peace.

For ten years she tilled soil, picked berries by hand, helped raise everyone else’s children, and sold handmade caftans with intricate beadwork to tourists, telling everyone to call her, “Angel.”

Ten years it took her to dry out. She moved to Seattle looking to start a life of her own. Going to work at a small “computing” firm, she learned to be a receptionist, then an office manager. She got clean that year, and learned to write code—ultimately becoming a managing partner.

The work of the little ragtag group of “geeks” didn’t go unnoticed in the computing world, and they were bought out at a ridiculous price in the very early 90’s, making them all millionaires several times over.

Free from the alcohol and drugs, she no longer felt the pull to satisfy her body with those of others. Her brain had been cleaned out—refreshed, really—by all of the work she’d put in. And now? Now she was free of the work itself.

Unsure of where to go, she did the only thing that made sense to her: she moved back home to Jersey. Her mother was thrilled. Her father barely noticed.

She’d gone by many names in the last few decades, but moving home she’d realized starting over meant Highbiscus, and then Angel, were just projections of what she thought she was supposed to be. To get to the root, to start over and figure out who she really was, she needed to just. Be. Barb.

She made herself at home three doors down from her parents in her aunt’s spare room. Sherrie was good company, and needed help with the mortgage. The companionship was good for her—good for Barb. High and Angel couldn’t have imagined finding their kicks, much less any peace, in the quiet mornings spent learning to sew with her aunt. In sitting on the stoop in the evenings, talking with neighbors. Occasional babysitting led her to the Community Center where all of the young girls who seemed a little lost flocked to her for advice and stories. Really, just to feel seen and understood.

Soon, she had a little tribe of tweens wanting to hear her stories of days gone by. She always made it seem more dangerous, more scary, than she remembered. She didn’t want them to think running off as a teenager was glamorous. She convinced the director of the CC to give her a budget to teach a basic sewing class. Most of the girls joined her class. Sweatpants and jogging shorts abounded that fall. Some with perfect stitching, some unraveling at the seams. All worn proudly.

Listening to these girls, sitting with them most afternoons of the week, she got to know them. Their struggles, hopes, and dreams.

It was a Tuesday during one of their now-normal sewing sessions she realized she could be doing more.

And so Barb got on her home computer and started researching a degree in child psychology, and maybe one in social work.

She’d seen first-hand what the attention and good advice of one adult could do for six teenage girls. Imagining what more she could do sent chills up her spine. She just KNEW. She got started.

Prologue:

The Barb Tarrebaum Life Skills Award is handed out every year a small Jersey community center. Every year, as the recipient is announced and walks to the gymnasium stage, Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” is played over the P.A. system. It gets ‘em every time.