It’s true. Feminist Gloria Steinem came to my house 38 years ago, at the height of her life of being the feminist Gloria Steinem. She would be turning 50 in a few months, which she mentioned almost as soon as she arrived. And I thought, wow, that’s old.

(I wouldn’t be turning 50 for almost 17 years. I didn’t tell her that, though.)

Sure enough, on her birthday later that year, she posed naked in a bathtub for People Magazine. And everyone made a big deal out if it. And I felt like telling everyone that she told me personally she’d be celebrating her 50th birthday. Although not nude in a tub.

My job the day she came to my house was to make my always well-received tuna fish. I opened a few cans, mixed the tuna with lots of mayonnaise, some lemon juice and a lot of pepper–my mother’s recipe. And I put out other things like bread and potato chips and placemats and napkins and soft drinks. And finally, coffee and some coffee cake and cookies.

I did my job. But I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Even though I’d always been a big fan of Gloria Steinem. And I always thought if I’d only been more savvy in crafting my own career as a writer, I could have been a contender like her. I didn’t say that, though, I just pushed the tuna closer to her. And the cookies, too.

This is how she ended up at my house: There was a feminist artist/writer living in Indiana who had made a deal to write a book about feminism and feminists, starring Gloria Steinem. But she felt she was getting too old to take on such a task. She was a friend of a friend of a friend of my husband back then, the outstanding writer Paul McGrath. And she decided he should do it.

So she invited me and my toddler daughter Molly and Paul–and one in the chain of mutual friends to come visit her and talk about the project, to see if he would truly be interested.

He seemed to be. And to Indiana we went.

She had a beautiful, rustic home in a vacation area on the water. And we all got along quite famously that day. And Paul agreed to write the book she had in mind. Not ghost-written; he would write it in his own name. She just wanted it written.

And when we left, she assured him that Steinem would be visiting us soon–and she’d make all the arrangements. And interviewing Steinem would get him going, she being THE feminist whose interview would put him on the right track for the rest of the writing of the tome, she explained.

Before we left, she piled every book she owned on the subject of feminism into our trunk–and into the backseat of our car, surrounding Molly and I with layers of what seemed like rubble from an old coal mine.

Paul perused the books from time to time over the next few months; he made notes so when Steinem visited he wouldn’t sound like a dummy.

Finally, the day came for Steinem’s visit to our big two-bedroom apartment on Michigan Avenue, at Randolph Street. Our friend who’d been at the Indiana house with us picked her up and brought her over. (She was to make sure–over the tuna fish– that Paul asked every question he should.)

So in walked Gloria Steinem that day, 49-years-old. And for some reason I went mute and couldn’t think of anything to say.

When the interview was over, Paul and our friend and Gloria made small talk and I went into the bedroom to nurse my toddler. As that’s what many women were doing in the early 80s: Being throwbacks to the early 50s. Probably a nefarious plot thought up by the Reagan administration to keep a maximum number of women out of the work force for as long as possible, nursing toddlers.

Afterwards, Molly and I rejoined the (now) gaggle at the table.

And I finally thought of something to say to Gloria Steinem. I had a question.

“Gloria,”I said. “Do women at Ms. Magazine nurse their kids while they work?”

Gloria looked sort of puzzled. “Well,” she said. “Yeah.”

And then she said, “If they have babies and they bring them to work, they do. Not everyone does. But those who have kids often do. If they bring them to work, and if they nurse which we think is fine. So yeah, they do.”

And that was that. She sat for a bit longer with us, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Or ask.

After a while, she left. And since that day, whatever she did or said or got publicity for, I remembered our little back and forth. My question, her answer. And that I made my mother’s tuna fish for her.

In the end, the book deal fizzled.

Almost 40 years later, through a divorce and moves and Paul’s death, I still have all the books that woman gave us. She didn’t want them back and we never saw her again after the day we visited her at her home in Indiana. And I often run across those feminist books from that era, in various bookcases throughout my house, the ones the woman who got everything going piled in the car that day.

And through the years, the day that Gloria Steinem came to visit I always thought of as one of my own life’s milestones. Like when I see the plates I served her lunch on, it always comes to mind.

And how I couldn’t think of anything to say until I asked my one big question. That, too, was a milestone.