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June 24, 2007
Seaview Avenue.
Picture this:
Two girls are sitting on a swing set located in a concrete, elementary school playground. The swing set's supporting poles are spray painted silver. The ground is covered by a thin black padding. There is at least one swing seat flipped over the high horizontal bar, dangling and useless. These swings are the flat, metal sort that politicians feared would be used to beat some poor child to death. In years to come, these swings would be replaced by the half-moon rubber kind. When these girls grow up, at least one of them will hate those rubber swings.
Th girls lament about their lives: they have curfews and older brothers. Their breasts are too big, and none at all. Boys are a nuisanance, but one of them has had a crush. Things are changing.
The girls are 12 and 9. The 12 years old is complaining that she is not yet a teen-ager, and she cannot wait. The 9 year old, exasperated exclaims "I'm not even in double digits, yet!"
The joke lives on though the years. The girls drift in and out of each other's lives, neither forgetting the other. They are family, bound by the experience of growing up on the same street, with the same kids, and surviving it all.
They've shared similar tragedies, similar enough to wonder if they were supposed to meet.
I'm the 12 year old, and my childhood best friend, we'll call her Janice, is now 7 months pregnant.
She's a wife, daughter, sister, and soon to be a mom. To me, she will always be, in some form, that skinny 9 year old girl who couldn't wait to hit double-digits.
Congrats, Janice.
* picture used from: http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/184364/2/istockphoto_184364_undisturbed_swings.jpg
Posted by lysa at June 24, 2007 1:09 PM
Comments
Very, very, very touching. I got more than a little verklemptht. You paint a vivid picture. Looking forward to the next chapter (where you're both pushing babies on swings?)
Posted by: Kbee at June 24, 2007 1:46 PM
Very nice! Great tribute and so visual. Much lurve being spread here.
Posted by: scottie at June 24, 2007 10:38 PM