Old Friends

The other day I received a message online from a childhood friend I haven't seen since kindergarten. We loved each other as five-year-olds, played all the time that year and the following year, and then went off to different schools and different lives that never managed to intersect. Until I got this message and was flooded by memories of this friend, who I can still see as plain as day, and her house, and her sister, and her father, and her housekeeper, standing in the kitchen, and the game we played in her bedroom, and her closet, and the fact that I knew that her mother had died, and that she was the first person I ever knew who had lost a parent and how much time I spent trying to imagine this, and failing, and then looking for clues as to how the family was functioning whenever I went to their house.

But mostly, I just felt overwhelming fondness for this old, good friend, who was lovely and warm and good at five and in her adult message seemed just the same, somehow, and although I haven't responded yet, I will, and I will tell her how happy it made me to receive her message, a trip back in time, on a cold, dark January morning.

And I was thinking about her again, today, when Lily ran into her first friend at an indoor market here near our apartment, earlier today, after we'd been to the movies. I was walking ahead and suddenly heard her squeal with laughter. I turned and saw her embracing a boy I recognized instantly, although I had never spent much time with him myself. Lily's first babysitter had been close friends with his babysitter, and the two children had spent hours together while their parents were working, during the first three years of their lives, before they were in regular school. And although I think a full two years may have passed since they have seen each other, and experts say long term memory doesn't kick in much before the age of four for most people, these two children were connected as powerfully as ever, instantaneously and effortlessly and joyfully, right in front of all four of their marvelling parents' eyes.

There is just something about those connections we form when we are very small. They are irrevocable, they are formative, they are intense, and they are important. So tonight I am feeling grateful for my old friends, and grateful for those who will someday be Lily's.