Best Friend

Written using the prompt: Who from your early childhood would you contact if you had time to do so?

 

 

Best Friend

 

The first day of second grade, fall 1977, she bounced into my life. She had moved to our

blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-town with her mom and brother earlier that summer. I was immediately drawn to her. She was small and spunky with dirty, dishwater blond hair and an adorable, button nose. However, the thing that attracted me most was her name. Like mine, it was unusual. “Capital E apostrophe cee, oh, e,” she’d say repeatedly to those who couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t have to spell my name for every Tom, Dick and Harry, but I did have to endure plenty of “Is your daddy a buck?” jokes. “Ha Ha-Very Funny-Yes, and my mommy’s a doe.” Of course, I didn’t say that as a seven year old. I wasn’t that clever. Instead, I blushed with embarrassment wishing my mother would have named me something nice and normal like Sarah or Shannon. 

 

That day, just as recess was beginning, I walked right up to her, looked her square in the eyes, and said, “Do you want to be my best friend?” Until that moment, I had led a very lonely existence. That very bold move changed my life. We became inseparable, both on and off the playground, in and out of school. We’d love each other, hate each other then love each other again. Even though she could have made a hundred different friends, she didn’t. She was my best friend, my only friend and I was hers. Our Siamese twin friendship went on for two solid years until I received the devastating news that she and her brother were going to go live with their dad. 

 

Her new school was in an equally quiet town, where she quickly became a big fish in a small pond.  She made a lot of new friends and attracted a lot of boys. She had a new best friend during the week, but I was still her best friend on the weekends when she’d visit her mom.

 

1983, six years after our friendship begun, I received a phone call from her. “My mom died,” she said with an eerie resolve. I started to scream and cry because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you learn of someone’s death. I’d seen it plenty of times on television. If you didn’t lose complete control of yourself, then you didn’t care enough about the person. I cared for my best friend and I cared for her mom, so I went for the emmy nominated, over-exaggerated performance. Unbeknownst to me, her mother had been ill all those years earlier when she’d sent my best friend away to live with her dad. She had an illness, which had caused the walls of her heart to weaken. She was never able to return to her auto factory job and was forced to live on disability and social security. She hadn’t been able to care for her children physically or financially.

 

I continued to see her off and on through out high school.  More off than on, but eventually our paths would take very different directions. I went to college. She got married and had a child. The last time I spoke with my best friend, she called to tell me her brother had been killed. I hadn’t heard from her in several years. This time I didn’t scream or cry. Instead I took down all the pertinent information and did nothing; not a single flower or card did I send. The last time I spoke with my best friend, I was living in Arizona, more than 2000 miles from my childhood home. It took a lot of effort for her to track me down. I had gotten married and changed my name. My parents had divorced and neither stayed in our hometown. It was important to her that I know about her brother and I did nothing. 

 

Since then, I have moved from Arizona to Oregon, back to Michigan, and now live in China. Our paths have not crossed since. In 1977, I had the courage to ask her point blank, “Will you be my best friend?” I hope someday, I have the courage to say, “I’m sorry.”