My favorite editor at the big newspaper
sidled up to me one day as my

rumpled, nondescript khakis and I
confronted the huge computer screen

blinking its green insistence.
She set before me what became

my favorite ice cream soda:
a Jik Jak frost from Vic’s—

chocolate malt ice cream with
nuts in bubbly water. She’d been

in town maybe three months
and knew more about my city

than I did, this woman with an
explorer’s heart, who loved to talk

to everyone. She drank conversation
like water, lived for repeatable

anecdotes. And she appreciated me
in a way that no other editor did

at that paper, affirming my still-
young self while gently teaching

me how to write well about
home interiors because, she said,

our job as journalists was to validate
people more than their surroundings

or job titles. “People,” she liked to say,
“matter more than anything.”

She loved opera and theater, food
and art, flowers and travel. She loved

so many people who loved her, too.
She loved me, partly, I think, because

I shared her younger sister’s name,
and my boss became my champion.

One day as I arrived in our office
wearing, unusually, a floral dress

with a wide skirt that swirled
when I turned, she smiled,

saying, “You look like Monet’s
garden,” a compliment, I knew,

from one who’d been there more
than once. She cocked an eyebrow

and waggled a forefinger at me.
“No beige,” she said.

I’ve never worn the color since.

•••

In memory of Patricia Beach Smith,
Sacramento Bee editor and arts reviewer,
Aug. 23, 1943–May 13, 2026