Here's my very late Five Word Friday with last week's words: club, metamorphosis, meow, sightless, befuddle
Inseparable
When I was around 11 or 12, I was inseparable from three girls: Tonya, Anna, and Jenny. (Not their real names.) We were all in the same sixth-grade class and three 0f us lived within a mile of one another. Tonya and Anna were cousins; Jenny was the daughter of the pastor at the Baptist church I attended.
It was the typical love-hate relationship girls tend to have at that age. We would adore each other one day, laughing and playing, imagining we were part of a secret club with covert codes for entry into Tonya’s tree house: “knock-knock-meow-hey-kitty-kitty.” And then the next day we would pair up two against two - or worse, three against one - whispering and snickering behind each others backs at school, passing nasty notes when our teacher wasn’t looking. We were such mean little things!
But in the end we would always make up, and four of us could be found at one house or the other for a weekend sleepover. I can’t imagine how many hours we spent riding our bikes between houses, heat monkeys from the hot Louisiana asphalt licking at our bare feet. Or how many nights we spent singing and dancing to the Grease movie soundtrack, imagining we would grow up to be as glamorous as Olivia Newton-John one day. Or how many gallons of lime sherbet and bags of M&Ms we ate.
It was a time of changing from girl to teenager, the first stages of the painful metamorphosis into womanhood. Hormones were beginning to surge and befuddle our simple girlhood realities into lives so much more complex. And, horrors upon horrors, some of us were finding that we actually liked boys.
I’ve pretty much lost track of all three of them now. We drifted apart in high school, each finding our own niche. Me the dance team, Jenny music, Tonya her boyfriend, and Anna…well, I’m not really sure. I did go visit Jenny about five years ago, though. She finished nursing school, married, moved to a lovely house in Texas, and has three beautiful children she home schools. A good life, I think. It was great to see her, but the little girls in us were barely there anymore and it seems we’ve lost each other again.
Tonya left home her junior year of high school to live with her boyfriend’s family when she and her mom’s arguments got to be too much for either of them. Her father killed himself shortly after she graduated. I was told he had been an alcoholic. I never knew; Tonya never told us. I was away at college and didn’t go home to the funeral. Tonya married her high school boyfriend and, the last I heard, they were still together. I hope he’s good to her.
I think Anna still lives in her childhood home and is a teacher. Anna’s mom became pregnant with her out of wedlock and never married. She lived at home with her parents, finished nursing school, and raised her baby girl with their help. So Anna grew up with the shame of having a single, never-married mother and no father in the picture. She never talked about being different, and none of us girls ever brought it up, either. By today’s standards it would have been no big deal. But at that time, and in our small community, it was a scandal for a couple to get a divorce, much less for a woman to have a child and never marry. I would have expected Anna to move far away as soon as she could. I wonder what has kept her in our little town, even in the same house. She’s the only one of us still there.
I turn 40 in a week…egad! I’m trying to remember all of the other girls’ birthdays, but the only one I know for sure is Jenny’s – December 10th. I think both Tonya and Anna had birthdays earlier in the year; they should already be 40. So, I’ll be next and then finally Jenny. I wonder how they’re handling it – which one is struggling with aging, which one could care less, which one has too many other things going on in her life to even think about it. I wonder if any have battled cancer, gotten divorced, or lost a child. Funny to think that I don’t know these things about them….Funny how time has a way of marching on, sightless and without feeling, breaking those bonds that you once thought could never be severed.
Happy 40ths, Tonya, Anna, and Jenny…wherever and however you are. I find myself missing my three girlfriends today.
It was the typical love-hate relationship girls tend to have at that age. We would adore each other one day, laughing and playing, imagining we were part of a secret club with covert codes for entry into Tonya’s tree house: “knock-knock-meow-hey-kitty-kitty.” And then the next day we would pair up two against two - or worse, three against one - whispering and snickering behind each others backs at school, passing nasty notes when our teacher wasn’t looking. We were such mean little things!
But in the end we would always make up, and four of us could be found at one house or the other for a weekend sleepover. I can’t imagine how many hours we spent riding our bikes between houses, heat monkeys from the hot Louisiana asphalt licking at our bare feet. Or how many nights we spent singing and dancing to the Grease movie soundtrack, imagining we would grow up to be as glamorous as Olivia Newton-John one day. Or how many gallons of lime sherbet and bags of M&Ms we ate.
It was a time of changing from girl to teenager, the first stages of the painful metamorphosis into womanhood. Hormones were beginning to surge and befuddle our simple girlhood realities into lives so much more complex. And, horrors upon horrors, some of us were finding that we actually liked boys.
I’ve pretty much lost track of all three of them now. We drifted apart in high school, each finding our own niche. Me the dance team, Jenny music, Tonya her boyfriend, and Anna…well, I’m not really sure. I did go visit Jenny about five years ago, though. She finished nursing school, married, moved to a lovely house in Texas, and has three beautiful children she home schools. A good life, I think. It was great to see her, but the little girls in us were barely there anymore and it seems we’ve lost each other again.
Tonya left home her junior year of high school to live with her boyfriend’s family when she and her mom’s arguments got to be too much for either of them. Her father killed himself shortly after she graduated. I was told he had been an alcoholic. I never knew; Tonya never told us. I was away at college and didn’t go home to the funeral. Tonya married her high school boyfriend and, the last I heard, they were still together. I hope he’s good to her.
I think Anna still lives in her childhood home and is a teacher. Anna’s mom became pregnant with her out of wedlock and never married. She lived at home with her parents, finished nursing school, and raised her baby girl with their help. So Anna grew up with the shame of having a single, never-married mother and no father in the picture. She never talked about being different, and none of us girls ever brought it up, either. By today’s standards it would have been no big deal. But at that time, and in our small community, it was a scandal for a couple to get a divorce, much less for a woman to have a child and never marry. I would have expected Anna to move far away as soon as she could. I wonder what has kept her in our little town, even in the same house. She’s the only one of us still there.
I turn 40 in a week…egad! I’m trying to remember all of the other girls’ birthdays, but the only one I know for sure is Jenny’s – December 10th. I think both Tonya and Anna had birthdays earlier in the year; they should already be 40. So, I’ll be next and then finally Jenny. I wonder how they’re handling it – which one is struggling with aging, which one could care less, which one has too many other things going on in her life to even think about it. I wonder if any have battled cancer, gotten divorced, or lost a child. Funny to think that I don’t know these things about them….Funny how time has a way of marching on, sightless and without feeling, breaking those bonds that you once thought could never be severed.
Happy 40ths, Tonya, Anna, and Jenny…wherever and however you are. I find myself missing my three girlfriends today.
I think I'll take a break from Five Word Friday for now....so no new words. I'll have to come up with something new! Cheers! :~}
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