In A NutshellXXVIII

In a Nutshell

A place set aside to answer 201 autobiographical questions
from a mother for her daughter. This may take awhile...join us if you like.

28. My best friend during childhood was.

As much as we moved around, I didn't have a single best friend during childhood. I always wanted one. Mama and Aunt Flo are friends with a set of twins they have known since they were toddlers. I have always envied that.

There was a family that lived a short distance from my grandparents that had a number of children, and Lupe and Maria were about my age. They were friends when I visited my grandparents, whether for a day or weeks. When we stayed there right after my father died, I played with them a lot. By the time we moved back from Puerto Rico, they had moved.

At St. Mary's of the Palms, there were Jean and Rita Pine, sisters who's mother was in a coma. They were the only other girls there who didn't go home most weekends and they were down one parent, which gave us a lot in common. Their father and grandmother would come to visit on weekends and take all three of us on picnics or to a movie, depending on the weather.

When Mama and Daddy married, we moved next door to the Kovans. They had a daughter, Jackie, who was only a couple of years older than me and she was always a good friend to me. Years and many moves later, when I was living in Modesto with Auntie, Mama and Daddy moved back to Stockton, and when I went to visit, Jackie called and took me out for pizza. That was amazing to me -- she needn't have remembered me at all, but she was infinitely kind and generous.

In El Paso there was Linda, with whom I played horses and rocket ships and tomboyed around not being sissy. Auntie sent me back to visit her one summer and years later, when I was living in Fairbanks and her life was falling apart, she moved up there and we were just as close as ever. I left Alaska for 22 years, and when I came back, Linda and I were overjoyed to be able to visit. Until circumstances changed, I would go to Fairbanks for a couple of weeks every summer and it was like there had been no time lost at all.

In San Mateo it was Kate, who I met in the library and with whom I had more in common than any of my earlier girl friends. Like Linda, Kate and I continued to write even after I moved. She came to Berkeley to visit when I was in college, meeting my Modesto pals. She came to Redwood City with her two children to visit while I was getting my Montessori training. After I moved to Fairbanks, somehow we both moved and changed last names at the same time, and were lost to each other for 38 years. When Julie found her for me, it was like no time had passed at all.

In Modesto, it was Jane and Robert and Michael. Again, lost when I moved to Fairbanks, found again years later. Still close.

So, I had my share of friends who I was close to and some I still am -- and I still envy my mother her friends from before she can even remember.