Nothing is more nostalgic for me than childhood summers. I
was fortunate enough to have a teacher for a mother – I never had to stay at
daycare during this precious time off school. It was just me, my best friend,
and the world as our oyster.
Part of the reason I fell in love with the story Bridge to Terabithia was because those
were my woods and they were alive. I say my sense of adventure came from my
first tastes of riding in planes, but a seed was planted long before that. Our
backyard jungle was full of storylines – fallen tree bridges leading to castles
of bamboo and a forgotten storm drain caves with mysteries lurking just past
the shadows. It’s funny how I don’t remember bugs, just the sun streaming
through breaks in the leaves above (bringing out the freckles on my nose).
We’d catch crawdads in the creek and put them in mason jars
for pets only to return to muddy red water and learn they fight to the death.
My mom wouldn’t buy a four-wheeler like the rest of the kids but that didn’t
stop us from having riding lawn mower races, and I’m smiling as I write this
because I remember how my friend always chose the fastest one. It was her only
flaw – she was a perfect friend, the kind that would take the fall for you and
actually write you when she said she would after her family moved away. I hated her brother, he was as mean as they
came, but if you thought a frail little thing like me had a chance of standing
up to him, well, I’m doing my best to make up for that now.
Her grandma could cook, let me tell you. I was always
jealous because that was the epitome of a good southern grandmother, and mine
was from the north and she’d re-serve Easter’s pork loin from the freezer when
we’d visit for her birthday. My friend and I would walk along the gravel roads,
sweating with baskets in hand in search for those wild blackberry bushes. Upon
our return, fingers dyed purple, we looked mighty suspicious and crossed our
fingers that her grandma would find our baskets full enough for the only thing
better than fresh wild blackberries: homemade cobbler. It just wasn’t the same
without a scoop of Blue Bell.
It’s hard not to salivate like my current beau’s dog when I
think about flaky biscuits with honey at her breakfast table. I can’t believe
it’s such a challenge to find RC Cola these days. Their fresh fruit trees were
the best, way better than the beans from our garden, and I remember giving
those watermelons a sounding thump before shooting the seeds from our mouths
like automatic weapons. What kid needs a seedless melon?
I have to laugh at myself a little now when jumping from
boulders into murky waters brings on nervousness. We’d swim in anything just to
get out of the heat. When she finally got that above ground pool, you might
have thought
we were in the Pacific instead of PVC and laminated siding. Talk
about easy living.
It’s a bit cruel when I think about the bee crisis now but
we’d gently tie a piece of string around a bumblebee to fly our pet kites –
most of which got away unharmed, and when I say we I mean her because I looked
like a girly thing in her shadow. Firefly jars were more innocent and there
were more than enough to go around. I remember “becoming of age” when my parents
let us walk to Purifoy’s Grocery less than a mile up the road – we’d buy
ourselves a couple of cream sodas and some of that Big League Chew gum. Once we
thought we’d make a little cash by picking up aluminum cans and an older
neighbor thought we were doing such a service he brought us a couple of cold
Dr. Peppers (which we never had because my mom didn’t drink them).
Moving away wasn’t actually what ended our friendship; like
I said, she was the bee’s knees and she’d always send me trinkets. Plus, she’d
move back and forth. To this day, though, I’m a little confused what happened.
I remember having an argument at her Halloween party around 8th
grade. I only remember thinking it was a misunderstanding. It was the first
lesson I had on that: that most fights are misunderstandings. It’s really given
me a need for clearing up miscommunications, to the point of annoying otherwise
interested boys.
Regardless, things never were the same again. Sometimes I
think about her. They say you’ll never forget your first love, but I think you
do ‘cause I don’t think about him at all. But I’ll never forget my first best
friend or the summers we shared. They’re the sweetest memories I have.
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