by Tami Erickson

Created on: May 20, 2009

We've been best friends since first grade. Of course neither one of us remembers the precise moment of our meeting, but it was sometime shortly after the start of school. We may have been drawn to each other because of our birth dates. Hers was two days after mine in the month of September. That meant we were the two oldest kids in our class due to the cut-off date criteria for how old a child had to be to start school. Regardless of what the exact moment of our meeting was or the reasons for our instant bond, our friendship has outlasted every other relationship either of us has ever had.

The bonds of our camaraderie grew throughout those elementary school years and by the time we reached middle school we were inseparable and I would not have survived high school without her.

In many ways we were as different as night and day during our school days. She, a short brunette, was an extrovert with a bubbling personality, contagious laugh and charming demeanor. I on the other hand, was a tall blond. I had a great personality and sweet smile too, but I was painfully shy throughout school. Had it not been for her, I would have probably spent all my school days in the library hiding in books. Instead, we participated in extra-curricular activities, had a strong circle of acquaintances and were relatively popular.

I moved away my senior year and although she was, at first, angry that I had abandoned her, we remained best friends. Over the following two decades, our friendship survived distance, disagreements and disillusionments. It waxed and waned as we each became preoccupied with husbands, children and careers.

I moved around a lot and some years we only managed to see each other or talk to each other a few times. Then there were years where we visited frequently and talked on the phone late into the night after husbands and children were fast asleep.

Our adult lifestyles turned out to be dramatically different as well. She graduated high school in the spring and got married in the autumn. She has been married to the same man for thirty-two years. They live in the same home they built shortly after marriage and have raised three beautiful daughters there. She has only had a couple different jobs, staying at each for well over ten years even though she hated the work environment of both companies. Many times I envied her stable, content life.

I moved around a lot, married and divorced twice, was widowed once and had a couple significant relationships in between.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>