Weekend Assignment #6

Weekend Assignment #6: Tell us about your best friend in second grade (or the grade closest to that in which you remember having a "best friend"). Where is he or she now? Do you still keep in touch? (Extra credit: show any pictures of yourself from second grade.)

Credit/Barbie Photo  barbiecollectables.com

 

Well, I will miss out on the extra credit until I can learn to use the scanner. Drat! But, I do have a best friend story Mr. Scalzi!

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It seems as though I have known Cindi for my entire existence, because I can't exactly remember her not being a part of my life.

I am told that we met in 2nd grade and that's about when I start my memories......of us!

Girlfriends! Best friends, forever! Through thick and thin! Blood sisters in Long Beach, California!

We shared..... scraped bloody knees and elbows, forts and backyard plays.

Skateboards made of out of old 2x4 pieces with skate wheels nailed on the bottom. Bicycles with playing cards stuck in the spokes, clipped on with wooden clothes pins. Giggles and silliness!

Hot summer evenings playing Red Rover, Red Rover......can Cindi come over? Sitting up high in the branches of flowering peach trees and sharing our dreams. Barbie dolls with blond pony tails, wearing black and white striped, one-piece bathing suits. Collecting pop bottles for penny candy at the corner store.

All night slumber parties in flannel jammies with painted toenails, playing 45 rpm records, telling scary stories until we believed them.

And of course tears, gossip, frustrations, first loves and tragic heartbreaks.

Cindi's parents were divorced and each summer she'd have to go spend time with her father and paternal grandparents in Bakersfield, which was about 150 miles away. To me, it might as well have been the end of the earth. It was torture for me to be without her for weeks on end and I'd count the days until we could be together again.

Cindi had an older sister named Jaynie and we worshipped her. She was soooo cool, except when she was babysitting us! Ugggggh! She had a record collection that we envied and sometimes she'd let us play her 45s on our little record player as long as we didn't get a scratch on them. Otherwise, she said, she'd "kill us!"   It was heaven!

Sometimes we'd be embarrassed to let Jaynie see us playing Barbies because we didn't want her to think we were "babies."

I was especially horrified at the thought that Jaynie would see me sucking my thumb!  But, Cindi didn't care if I sucked my thumb. She was that kind of friend.

Jane, Cindi's mom, was a surrogate mother to me. She was older and more stable than my mother, who was just 17 years older than I. Jane was a nurse and I always felt very safe at her house. She rescued my younger siblings and I from some particularly scary situations a time or two back then. We were grateful to have her in our troubled lives.

Fast forward, 43 years later.......... Cindi and I have been the best of friends all these years, despite the fact that I moved 150 miles away from her about 23 years ago.  We both recently celebrated our 50th birthdays, which are within days of each other. Over the years, I have taken great delight in reminding her that she's "older" than me!

As adults we've shared........dating, weddings, the births of our children, camping and vacations, card games and dinners as couples and rocky times in our marriages. I swore her marriage would never last. But, it was my marriage that crumbled and I ate my humble pie! We shared my divorce, and my emotional breakdown at the time.

We've dealt with the blows that life has sent our way, to include illness and deaths of our loved ones......my sister and my mother, and Cindi's husband, which were all too soon.

Then...losing our grandparents.

Successes and failures.

Heartbreak and tears, over children and lost loves.

Misunderstandings and mended hearts.

Then, growth, dreaded aging and especially the grace of God, for all we have in our lives.

We are truly blessed.