Threads That Hold

The sort of friendships that last forever, formed as adolescents

“Sign my cast?” he said, with a smirk. The quarterback on the junior high football team, freshly injured with a broken arm, looked straight at me. ME. Up until that moment I was invisible – the new kid in school hoping for a place to belong.

He was the first to notice me. Naturally, I developed a crush that lasted years, my obsession fed by passing notes between classes and occasional coveted dates. His notes named me like a “sister”. It didn’t matter how he saw me. He SAW me.

I remember thinking my life would be complete if only I could be his girlfriend.

Life had other, better, plans.

I remember my first failed attempt at group sport: dodge ball. I was not athletic. Embarrassed, I believed I was too fat. I was not. This is a lie most girls believe. At twelve, I was awkward. Different. I didn’t belong. 

Fate wrapped its arms around me, giving me my people later in that first year of seventh grade. 

Four core girlfriends gravitated together as we moved though larger groups – not the most popular nor the least in my small school. We giggled, gossiped, and grew. Sometimes we splintered off, weaving through the tapestry of hormones and our hunger to fit in.

Underneath it all was the music, wearing out the vinyl and our voices with Elton John, Carole King, Cat Stevens – memorizing lyrics that still take me right there whenever it plays. 

Our young lives bubbled over with class assignments and red faces when caught dozing off during class. I remember shoving tampons under bathroom stalls because of a sudden period. I remember handwritten notes pressed sneakily under desks during class or handed off in hallways. 

I remember a fixation on boys, belly laughs and belonging. 

I remember one friend’s plan to run away from home with her boyfriend, and my guilt at giving her plan up when the principal asked me what I knew. A friend of a friend whose period had been missed entirely. Pregnant at fifteen. Lessons big and small, shaping me like a clay pot.

The four of us naively drank our first alcohol together and smoked our first weed. Sharing details of first kisses, and other rites of passage were held up –  given meaning as we felt it all together. Taking various levels of risks, somehow coming away unscathed. Thank you, fate.

Our times together from seventh through twelfth grade helped us understand what we cared about, who we were, what kind of person we wanted to become. 

Foundational. Pivotal.

One of these friends became my bestie, so we organized our schedules to be together in every class. At halloween, we sewed two pairs of overalls together and wore them, sharing the middle leg. Siamese twins! We got T-shirts printed – one with “Uh” and the other with “Oh”, in that inseparable way of best friends.

We escaped our hometown for the same college, becoming roommates. 

We are still besties, communicating and supporting one another through the inevitable ups and downs of our rich and full lives. 

Today, most of these friendships live inside each one of us. If we don’t speak for twenty years, it doesn’t matter. We carry the DNA of a shared growing up –  and out. We grew from the seeds we planted, nurtured –  into what we’ve now become.

We are not the same, nor even alike in large part. Yet there is a thread that holds us in relationship, in memories, in unexpected and marvelous ways.