Friends, Laughs, and Goodbyes

We were all there on the sofa bed in my living room, excited after cake and the opening of presents.  Torn wrapping paper was still strewn about the floor, and the big bow was still sticky enough to stay on my shirt.  We were huddled in pajamas and a tangle of sleeping bags, just sitting in a circle talking.  Well, at least we started by talking, then we were laughing and wiping away tears, then we were all shouting at once, interrupting each other, everyone trying to tell some story or another over everyone else.  That’s how it always happened.  I guess there’s no time for manners when you’ve known someone your entire life.

That was my 11^th birthday.  We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the last birthday party where we were all together.  The six of us girls had met in preschool and remained friends since.  When we left, none of us were going to the same elementary school, so it was the countless birthday parties and play dates that kept us together. 

In our chaotic kind of conversation, the preschool stories were inevitably brought up.  And no matter how many times we’ve recounted the tales and incidents from preschool we can never get through it without bursting into laughter.

“Remember when we were trying to make a sand castle without wet sand?” I asked with a huge grin.  Blank stares and a pause in the chatting. “You don’t remember!?” I was incredulous; this was one of my most vivid memories. “Well, we wanted to make a sand castle or something.  I remember it was at least Rebecca and me, I think you were there too, Susannah, but Timmy said he wasn’t going to get the hose out to make wet sand.  Remember we’d always want him to bring out the hose when he was on yard duty?”

“Oh my god, remember that really mean woman who was always on yard duty and would always eat lunch with Nadya?  I hated her.”  Susannah interrupted.

“Yes! What was her name?”  Fiona shrieked.

“Wait, let me finish!” I said slapping Susannah’s sleeping bag to get her attention again.

“Ok, go!”

You learn to speak quickly it this crowd, because if I had waited for an apology for the interruption, it would have been too late.  On to the next topic.  Just like that.  Probably pretending to be turtles when we were sitting on the toilet.  “Anyway, Timmy said he wouldn’t get the hose out, so one of us had the brilliant idea of trying to make our own wet sand –and the water fountain was right there.”

“Oh, I see where this is going,” Nina groaned.

I continued, “Yeah, so we took turns filling our mouths as full as we could with water from the fountain, running across the courtyard, and spitting it out into our area in the sandbox.  We didn’t get very far so we had to repeat this several times.  But when it was my turn to fill up, as I was running back, I thought about how clever we were, like we were tricking the teachers who didn’t want us to use wet sand, and I just starting laughing and I couldn’t stop.  The water sprayed out of my mouth and got all over my clothes.  I think I was still laughing when I got back to the sandbox.”

“We were so funny,” Rebecca laughed.

“That’s the thing though.  You were really upset, like, you guys were mad at me for not bringing back water.”

“That’s hilarious,” said Sasha.

“But the best thing was when we tried to escape, remember that?  That was ridiculous,” Nina said.

“Oh my god, that was so funny.  I remember our whole plan!” I responded.

Separating the sandbox from the parking lot was a wooden fence that ran along the side of the school’s playground.  Each plank of the fence was about eight inches wide and the space between them was just the right size for peeking out to see if your parents were coming yet.  At recess one day, as my friends and I were looking through the fence, we realized that some of us knew how to walk home from school, and on this, we began to form our brilliant plot.  Nadya told us that her dad owned a candy store, so we all agreed that it would be perfect to go there one day during recess.  We could sneak out, oh, and get some money, and bring the candy we’d buy back before any of the teachers realized we were gone.  Rebecca’s house was closest, so once we escaped the preschool grounds we would go there first to get the money.

Once we had planned our mischievous excursion it was time to put it in action.  Clearly we couldn’t just walk out the gate – that would be too obvious, so we had to think of another way to get out.  After careful inspection, we deemed that our best chance of escape was to simply go through the fence.  One of the boards was already a little wobbly, and if we worked at we could shake it loose enough for us to slip through.  It was in a good place too, because we were mostly hidden behind the slide from the scrutiny of the yard duty teacher’s eyes.

Diligently, each day at recess, our thin arms furiously shook the wooden board.  We huffed and puffed, dresses swayed about out fragile waists, thin curls of hair whipped across our pale soft faces.  We had a rotating, turn-taking system so that one person would not get too tired.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember how the story ended.  I know we didn’t even succeed in the first step of breaking out, but I don’t know if we just gave up, forgot over a long vacation, or if we in fact worked on loosening the fence until the day we graduated.  Either way, it’s the thought that counts right?

 “…Erin ate a whole napkin because she was pretending it was gum,” Susannah said.

“Ok, that’s not true! You always say that, but you were doing it too!”  I had been thinking of our escape and didn’t catch this discussion in time to stop it.  It was true that when we were about five, Susannah, Nina, Rebecca, and I were eating at the little plastic blue and white table and we were pretending to be cool teenagers, so of course we had to chew gum.  But since we weren’t allowed gum, we chewed on our napkins. “I was chewing on it, but then I spit it out, I didn’t swallow it.”

“No, you did,” insisted Fiona.

I’m always outnumbered on this argument and not wanting it to go any further, I said, “Alright, let’s not talk about that...”  If I didn’t stop it now they’d soon be going on about how I pretended to have a retainer too.  That stopped when a real retainer replaced the imaginary one.

*                         *                      *

As I walked out of the orchestra room from zero period rehearsal I heard someone shout out to me.  “Hey, Erin!” 

I turned around awkwardly with my twenty pound backpack slapping against the backs of my legs and my black violin case in my hand.  “Hi, Susannah!”

“Did you know that Nina is moving to New York?”

Whoa… WHAT!? This can’t be true, our Nina from preschool, but…oh…wait…  “Ha ha, good one.  It’s April Fool’s, you didn’t trick me,” I said trying to convince myself more than her.

“What? Oh no, I’m being serious.”

“Susannah, I’m not going to believe you, it’s April Fool’s.”

“No, really.”  Susannah looked around the King Middle School courtyard and beckoned Fiona over.

“Fiona, isn’t Nina moving?” she asked her.

“Oh, yeah she is.  You didn’t know, Erin?”  Fiona said indifferently.

“No. And I know it’s just a joke you’re pulling on me for April Fool’s!”

Isn’t it? Could they be serious?  I can’t imagine Nina moving.  And to New York?  That’s so far away!  If it was true why weren’t they freaking out?  When did they find out?

At this point a whole group of Fiona’s sixth grade friends, who I didn’t even recognize, were trying to convince me that Nina, whom I’ve been friends with since before we could talk, was moving to New York.  I was annoyed that these people who didn’t even know Nina were trying to tell me that she was moving.  I refused to believe it.  I wouldn’t fall into their trap. 

But Fiona and Susannah sounded so serious, and Susannah looked like she wasn’t even thinking about April Fool’s when I said it was.  Of course Fiona’s friends probably actually thought it was an April Fool’s joke.  Oh! But it has to be a trick.  I would have known if Nina was moving.  Yeah, I would have known.  Our argument, however, was cut short before we could get to the bottom of it, by the jarring school bell.

“Whatever, I still don’t believe you guys!”

We all shuffled off to class, but as I crammed my violin in my bright red locker with my newly acquired expert packing skills, I tried to grapple with the idea that Nina would be gone.  Would it be one of those cliché friendship stories involving hours of phone conversations and mailing spontaneous gifts and traveling out to see each other?...No, of course not that’s stupid.  And unrealistic.  When sixth period finally ended, I came home from school confused, angry, frustrated, distressed and miserable.  I prepared to ask my mom if she knew anything as soon as I walked in the door, but I didn’t need to.  When she saw my inquiring face she said, “You heard about Nina today.  Her mom called me while you were at school.”

“It’s true! Is she actually moving to New York? Susannah and Fiona told me, how did they already know?”

My mom tried to console me.  I discovered that I hadn’t heard about the move yet because Nina had wanted to tell me in person, once the plans were more final.  She wasn’t moving until the end of the summer so we could still go to camp together.  As I walked into my room, one of the first pictures I saw on my bulletin board was of me and Nina and Malcolm, our preschool teacher.  Malcolm had taken the picture and had just barely managed to get his face in the frame.  Nina’s head was tilted toward mine, causing our blonde hair to blend together.  Her grinning pink lips turned her tanned cheeks upward into a cute smile.  I wondered how much would change once she was gone, but I realized that I would still have all the memories we shared.

Life moved normally even after I heard the truth.  When I went to Nina’s house we still made lemonade, ate Annie’s Shells, and played never-ending games of Monopoly.  Like any middle-schooler, I craved the end of the school year, but at the same time, everyday that passed was one day closer to the ominous and ever-approaching “moving day”.

Once summer was in full swing, and Nina was spending her last weeks as a Californian, she had a goodbye party at an Oakland A’s baseball game.  The party members occupied almost an entire section of the stadium, and since Nina and I never went to the same school, I didn’t know the majority of people there.  We were on the third deck in the “nose bleed” section, but the weather was beautiful, I was squished in between my friends, and it was perfect.  When it comes to baseball, I categorize people in three groups (excluding the snobs whom might as well be sitting in the dugout with their scorecards in one hand and player stats in the other): people like me who watch every detail of the game, cheering and booing until they’re hoarse, getting up only to sprint to the ladies room before the line has had time to grow to an atrocious size.  Then there are people like Nina who enjoy the whole experience but don’t really have a clue as to what’s going on.  But they always try to understand, and they always have fun.  Then there are the people who appear to be there just to walk around.  They constantly get up for food, and not a minute after they finish their sausage, they want to go look at the team apparel.  Well, if you want apparel, why don’t you look down and try to appreciate the athletes actually wearing the jerseys, instead of the plastic mannequin models?

Anyway, unfortunately about half the party guests were in this third group, but the good thing is that they are gone so often you don’t have to deal with them, and only the “true fans” are left.  Among these people was my preschool teacher Malcolm.  His soft-spoken manner and genius made me look up to him (even more so because he towered over me by at least two feet).  I loved him dearly because he was a role model that trained good habits in me at such an early age, and I truly believe that I was one of the smartest five year olds ever because of everything he taught me.  Like in my tenth grade AP Biology class, when most people were slightly disgusted by the experience of dissecting a sheep’s heart, I was already a pro because I had done it in preschool.

During one of the inning breaks, on the lighted announcement board, in between thanking Round Table Pizza and wishing Jim and Mary a happy 20^th anniversary, was the sign that read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY NINA.  Everyone who saw it got really excited and started trying to figure out which of the adults wrote it.  Nina’s mom said it wasn’t her, so we all concluded it was Malcolm.  He insisted it wasn’t him, but we pretended he was trying to be mysterious by not telling us.  Seeing the birthday announcement made us feel special, like it was a good sign, and even though Nina was moving across the country everything was going to be ok.

*                      *                      *

When my eyes opened I saw Nina sleeping on the trundle bed across from me.  Her thick, wavy blonde hair was layered across the pillow her head rested on, and the dim light filtering through the curtains in my room shone gently upon her rosy cheeks.  As I sighed and stretched under my covers her eyelashes flickered and opened.  She saw that I was awake and smiled.  “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I simply replied, smiling back.  “Are you ready to get up?”

“Mm-hmm.”

We crawled out of our beds, and made our way downstairs into the kitchen.  Every summer since Nina moved to Manhattan, she has come to California and stayed with my family for a week.  We used to go to camps together, but this summer I was doing a retreat for high school students and she was a CIT at Cazadero Music camp, so we only had one week in between our activities to hang out.

“Let’s make French toast,” I suggested.

“That sounds wonderful.  Here’s the milk.  Two eggs?”

As carb lovers, French toast was almost like our signature breakfast.  We made it all the time, there are even pictures of Nina and I making French toast when we were really little.  Once the toast was golden, we sat down at the newspaper littered table and began to eat.  When I was finished reading the comics I moved on to the unfinished puzzle we had been working on the day before.

“Can I have them?” Nina asked.

I understood that she meant the comics and passed them to her.  “Have you seen one that looks like a person, but with a weird arm thing; it’s mostly black with a tiny bit of yellow?”

She riffled through the puzzle pieces on her side of the table. “I think I know what you’re talking about…is this it?” She extracted a piece and reached over the maple syrup to hand it to me.

“Whoa, perfect! It fits! And look, the bird connects here too.”

That was one of the great things about puzzles – a piece could be separated, but once it was put in the right spot, everything fell into place.  In many ways, my relationship with Nina and my other preschool friends is the same.  Even though we are living on opposite sides of the country, when we are together again, everything fits right.  Nothing is the same twice because we are constantly changing, but our friendship keeps us intact, and even if we get separated, I know that we all belong to the same puzzle.