Peggy

I didn't fall in love with Peggy today.  I fell in love with her when I first met her.  I was three and she was two.  At least that's how we always remembered it.  In my mind's eye, I see these two tiny little girls staring at one another in their adjoining back yards.  I have always had this picture in my memory for 61 years now, so it must be true.

Peg missed the cut-off date for kindergarten, so although we were both born in 1950, Peg wasn't allowed to start public school until a year after I did.  I think perhaps this was a good thing.  Peggy and I were the very best of friends before and after school, on the weekends, during holidays, and all summer long.  That friendship was never compromised by the complexities of being in the same classroom all day long.  And we were free to have our best friends in our own classes, always considered separate from our bff status at home.  Despite the several close friendships I have enjoyed over my lifetime and the many people I have referred to as my best friend, in my heart that designation has always and will always refer to Peggy.

In a perfect world, Peg would have turned 64 today.  She has been gone nearly eleven years now, a victim of the world's greatest terrorist, Cancer.  But I am choosing not to dwell on that today.  I would rather fall in love with a celebration of Peggy.

Time and age deplete so many of our memories, but there remain many that seem indelible.  When I think back to the 15 years that Peg and I were next-door neighbors, these are the images that appear in my head:  the cherry tree we climbed in Peg's backyard, the rusted-out barrel where we burned papers at night, the lily-of-the-valley that grew under the pines, the morning glories that worshiped the sunlight by the bay windows, a fallen home-made lemon cake that we were moving from my house to hers, the cots in the Army tent in her backyard in summertime, her picnic table and hammock, the Kraft caramels in the candy cupboard in her dining room, Betsy McCall paper dolls, her English setter Vaughnie, my English setter Susie, the dollhouse we built from cardboard boxes, blood-sister rituals under the pine tree, the Chums Club under her front porch, the Halloween that we thought we were a two-headed lady only to have people ask if we were Siamese twins, the Christmas morning phone call to answer the question, "What did you get?"

As we got older, the memories take on a loss of innocence.  Climbing up the water tower, stolen cigarettes in our pockets, only to find that once we reached the top of the tower to taste the forbidden fruit, the cigarettes were broken.  Sneaking into Peg's mother's bedroom to read the copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover hidden in the nightstand.  Going through old newspaper clippings in Peg's attic to discover what Peg had never been told:  that her father had been married before.  Peg driving the old Plymouth up to New York state where a fake ID allowed us to be served alcohol.

If I were to write about all the things I remember about Peg, this blog would have to take on a whole new identity.  I've remembered and written enough to wrap myself in a glow of memory of my best friend.

I've loved you forever, Peg.  And I always will.