Birthday - Kelly

I moved back to Indiana when I was seven years old. My first memory of Indiana is when my parents took me to school that April day. I was walked to the door of my classroom where the teacher came out and introduced herself. She was beautiful. She leaned back into the room, signaled for two girls to come out, introduced them to me and told them to show me around the school. And off I went with these two girls. The memory ends there, but one of those girls became my friend.

Kelly and I both have memories of time spent at my house those early beginnings of our friendship. We both remember dancing around in my basement to Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf from my Walt Disney 33 LP. Sometime after that, we moved on to make other friends, and it wasn't until around the 7th-grade year that we hooked back up. My memory is that I was lost and looking for something more that school year. I stumbled on to a threesome and wormed my way in. Eventually, one girl moved away and I became an official member of the threesome, with Kelly as the leader. She, will, of course, deny this role, but that is the way my memory remembers it.

Throughout our 8th grade year and most of our freshman year the three of us, Kelly, Robin and I, were inseparable. They introduced me to Shaun Cassidy and we spent hours listening to his music, creating scrapbooks, and decorating our rooms with his pin-ups and posters. We spent a lot of time writing scripts for radio shows that we taped in the privacy of my bedroom, and we believed we entertained the neighborhood by singing to them out my bedroom window.

Eventually, time passes and people change. Kelly and I drifted apart those latter years of high school. I remember getting a letter from her in college, but I'm not sure what prompted it. I heard tidbits about her through the years but didn't see her again until a couple of years after college. I was taking night classes to get my teaching degree at another college. I was sitting waiting for the teacher to enter when I heard a familiar voice. I turned to my left and sitting one desk away from me was Kelly. We chatted and were off and running as if those years in between never had happened.

I moved to Florida and eventually talked Kelly into joining me. I tell her she saved my life by doing so. I was married with two children, Darcy a new baby. I was falling into that time of a mother's life when she is drowning without adult conversation and a life of her own. Kelly arrived and gave me just what I needed. I like to think we gave her a little something back.

Today, Kelly is a part of our family. My girls adore her. We already have her lined up to be the adult they go to for make-up lessons and answers to questions they don't feel comfortable asking Mom. She helps them with homework and helps us with childcare. She is there to console us, laugh with us, share with us, and just watch TV with us. She is my friend. She is our friend. I'm so glad that she was the one that the teacher chose that day to show me around my new school.

Happy Birthday to our dear friend.