moving forward, looking back

Can favorite colors predict friendship? Mine was red, hers was purple; and while both hues share the same base tone, it still seems like maybe that preference should have been reversed. One is vibrant, unrestrained, joyous; the other has those underlying traits, but is tinged toward blue, as if perpetually bruised.

But nonetheless, we liked what we liked and friends we became, though brought together by the most unlikely of circumstances. Me, the intense, studious, awkward perfectionist; her, slightly younger, learning disabled, uncoordinated, never to graduate from a fifth grade speller. What brought us together was her older brother, taking another friend of mine to task for making fun of her. What made us inseperable was an indefinable sense of otherness united against the uncertain outcomes – and unpredictable cruelties -- of the world.

Our Barbies actually became friends first, the way it is with many little girls. At the beginning of that first summer, we were trading doll clothes and fixing up teddy bears. By the time school started, we were sharing secrets and having sleep-overs. Her mother would drive us to the movies and on the way, we’d make up nonsense songs like “Somebody’s Tickling My Hair” and “Ice Cream All Over Your Chin.” We’d sit on the back step as the summer sun went down, playing checkers and comparing scrapes and mosquito bites. We had formed a club of two, a not-so-secret society based upon an understanding of what we were and a certain wariness of the world. But it was also based upon much more: By the time we parted ways much later – the year I left home for college – I had helped her learn to read, showed her long division, taught her to braid her own hair. And in the end, I was the one who learned the most.

Later, much later, we got together for lunch and it wasn’t quite the same. She had stayed very much as she'd been, I had moved on. Funny how we equate the latter with progress, because it isn’t necessarily synonymous. There she sat: Still unable to drive, still unable to make change, still sweet and overflowing with simple, innocent joy. I, on the other hand, was weighed down by a mortgage, family troubles, work worries, an armload of other concerns. And you know, it occurred to me even then to wonder which of us was at more of a disadvantage.

There are moments to this day when it all comes back to me: The slant of the sunlight on the pavement, the smells of suntan lotion and citronella, popsicle juice on our fingers, cats-eye marbles on the back porch. I have an education, a big office, a parking space with my name on it. And without a moment's reservation, I would trade it all in for one more summer day with her, the chance to be just as we were back then.

How much easier it seems to get rich, than to know when we have gotten rich.