The First Girl I Loved, Part One

It's odd that this should be my first post of 2018.  Odd that I haven't written for so long.  Some other day I will tell you why, but maybe that is why I haven't written.  I don't know the whole answer yet.

Anyway, on my way through my documents looking for the recipe for Tuna Brownies--yep, that's what I said, Tuna Brownies--I came upon something that I wrote a few computers ago and managed, through the magic of computer guys, to save.  (Tuna Brownies are actually part of another story that puts my Lukas in the limelight.)

So, I came upon the first chapter of something I have always wanted to write.  I do tend to do that, write first chapters--or titles.  I have lots of titles, most of them written down on little pieces of paper from the age of no computers.  But I digress.

This little story is true and doesn't even have a specific animal in it, unless you count four year old humans.  It's all true and no names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I think the first girl I loved was Colleen Zimmerman.  Why did she speak to my heart so?  I was three when she moved in next door.  I had a friend—Betty Rather—with whom I’d played since I was two.  But Colleen’s yard bordered mine and her house was built just like mine.  And there was something magic about her and her family and the twin, two-story houses that we lived in then.  I wanted people to believe that she was my sister.  I was a little blond girl, somewhat beer barrel shaped, with her hair in mandatory, pathetically thin braids.  Colleen was a skinny little thing...with longer braids of normal thickness. We weren't fooling anybody.  I spent as much time as I could with her. 

The Zimmermans were perfect for us, with a kid just the right size and gender for each of us.  They had an extra girl, older than all of the rest of us, but I don't think she minded being excluded.  Sometimes we all played together, shooting games mostly, lots of ducking and dying, although one famous variety show, staged in my garage, remains in my memory. Sometimes the four youngest girls became the Lennon sisters, singing siblings from the Lawrence Welk Show.  (I insisted that I be Janet, the youngest of the performing siblings, so Colleen, because she was 3 months younger than me, had to be Mimi, (the actual fifth Lennon sister, who only sporadically performed).  "Kathy" was somehow always on vacation when we performed.  I know now why I refused to be Kathy.  She seemed too much like a grown up.  I had no desire to be a grown up.  I'm not sure that I want to be one now.

Sometimes all the kids in the neighborhood gathered for frozen tag.  For Colleen and I there were dolls and countless pretend games, homes and stores and restaurants and schools, all in my garage. We rescued birds from our cats, caring for them as well as we could, and having elaborate funerals for the victims that didn't survive.  Somewhere in the yard beside Colleen's old garage, there is a metal breadbox with a sparrow skeleton.  

There were sleepovers that we tried to make last as long as possible, one time pretending to sleep until lunch time so that she could eat at my house and we could stay together into the afternoon.  Mind you, our houses were only a few feet apart and there wasn’t any reason that we couldn’t just play together outside.  But, for me, if we slept in the same house, it was more like belonging together.  On Christmas mornings we could run over to each other’s house in our pajamas to compare the haul and to envision the games that would grow out of those gifts.  And when our sisters grew up enough for a summer of playing canasta, we teased them for having become incredibly boring. 

One time, when I had done something that Colleen didn’t like, she stopped being my friend for a hideously long time, maybe as long as a week.  It was the summer after 3rd grade, for me, and I remember yearning after her, heartbroken, certain that I had lost her forever and certain that this was important forever.  I remember standing in my yard calling out to her as she crossed the street to play with the boys that lived over there (that we didn’t even like that much) and wondering if I would survive this. When she deigned to forgive me I was careful to remember my transgression so that I never would lose her again.  

She was my best friend, and in some ways I think I measure all of my friends against that first innocent love.  When we were ten years old Colleen's family moved to Iowa and I felt a hollowness that was nearly overwhelming, made worse because she was initially excited about the move and less devastated than I.

That was the first love of my life, the first real loss for my heart to bear.