H eadlines
Author Continued from Page 5
listening to The Who.

The destructive collision
with the Mack truck.

The coma that caused Jenny
to miss several months of
school and she had to relearn
to walk and talk.

The conversation in which
Barish told Jenny, now back in
school, that she couldn’t talk to
her because of the lawsuit.

Barish, who
didn’t remember all the details from
the accident itself, asked Jenny
if she did. Jenny looked her in
the eye and recounted them in
a tone that Barish described as
“reportorial.” But the women still agreed
to exchange numbers and talk
more. The journey
Courtesy of Shanti Arts Publishing
“My goal that night was to
apologize,” Barish said.

Barish picked up Jenny at her
home in North Wales and drove
to a nearby Olive Garden. It
was a Monday night and hardly
anyone else was in the restau-
rant. The women were free to
talk candidly, and they did for
more than three hours.

Barish apologized and
Jenny apologized back. They
had both been told to be silent
in those days, they reminded
each other.

Jenny reminded Barish that
Barish had visited her in the
hospital after the accident.

“I hadn’t remembered that,”
the author said.

Finally, toward the end of
the night, Jenny told Barish
that she needed to write about
their experience. Barish gulped
and then started crying.

She had already started
thinking about the memoir.

But she wanted Jenny’s blessing
before following through.

“We realized it was
unhealthy to not talk about
horrible things that happened
to you,” the author said.

Barish talked to Jenny
over the phone once a month
during the writing process.

Now, the women see each other
whenever the author visits the
area. “It’s a friendship,” Barish
said. l
Barish’s book is called “Seven
Springs” because she would
always think about the spring-
time accident during the season
of rebirth. After the reunion, she
even visited Mt. Airy again to
look deeper into what happened
and to try to process it.

She interviewed her parents,
talked to her two best friends
from high school and dug
through old journals and
papers. She even visited the
accident site.

But Barish didn’t really
learn anything new, she said.

Nonetheless, in 2006, she
emailed Jenny, asking if her
old friend would be willing
to talk to her for a nonfiction
book about the accident.

Jenny said no.

“So then I put it away,”
Barish said.

And she started to work on
herself, she added. The writer
reconnected with her faith by
reading Torah. She meditated,
did yoga and went to therapy.

Over time, Barish began to feel
better, like she was carrying a
little less weight.

Then, she returned to the
area for her 40-year reunion,
and she called Jenny to make a jsaffren@jewishexponent.com;
215-832-0740 dinner plan.

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