reflections on dawn and my daughters

I met her when I was eleven.  The minute she saw me she said to herself, I want to be her friend.  I found this out years later.  She was new to our town and our school, St. Joseph's.  I had been there since first grade.  It was seventh grade, not the easiest time to enter a new social scene.  We became best friends that year, wearing our hair in pig tails, which seventh graders did in the 70's in the U.S.   

By high school Dawn and I were inseparable in our blue polyester Catholic school uniforms, kneesocks hovering below our knobby knees, brown leather tie "school" shoes, a new pair each year, worn all year.  We were on the cheerleading squad and the swim team, we did theater shows together.  We slept at each others' homes almost every weekend, and I loved helping her clean out her closet.  (Don't ask, I'm a little odd.) We laughed and joked and traded clothes.  She admired my art talent and I admired her big heart, her confidence, and how she treated old people.  I want to be more like her, I decided, and I started to.  Knowing her really changed me. 

We stayed in touch as the years went on and we were in separate colleges, visiting in the summers, talking on the phone, writing letters (remember letters)?  When we graduated from college I was finished first so I went to see her at the University of Virginia, where she starred in a play.  I whistled so loud at curtain call.  Years later we both went on to graduate school.  I moved to California and got married.  Dawn was there at my wedding, helping set up behind the scenes.  She was at the birth of my first child, driving through what would normally be close to three hours of traffic in 1 1/2 hours.  Never hit a red light.  Remarkable.

Now fast forward all these years.  We both are married with three kids.  Our kids have spent time pretty much every summer together since they were very young, so they are like cousins.  They really love each other.  They live 6000 miles away.  Dawn and I always talked of raising our families in the same place.  We got close a couple of times, but it never worked out. 

I saw Dawn this summer, and she and her three boys spent a few days and nights with us.  I miss Dawn.  I miss having a close girl friend in my daily life.  I miss having someone I can have fun with doing anything, even going to the hardware store we are talking and laughing all the while, which we managed to do this summer on a three hour getaway while Gary watched ALL SIX KIDS.  Thanks G.   

This is the photo of our kids having a "tantrum" when it was time to say goodbye.

I realized something recently.  My girls are now 11 and 14.  Annabel is the age I was when I met Dawn.  Sky is the age I was when we really became close.

My girls at at such great ages.  They are silly like Dawn and I were as girls.  When I see them interact now I constantly remember myself at their ages.  The girls and I have been having so much fun, laughing our heads off this week.  They are growing up, but still silly.

This makes me miss Dawn a little less.  It's almost like having her here.