Birthday Shout out #11

Another shout out to someone who reads my blog and who shares a HUGE part of my life even though we haven't seen each other in a million years. Michelle was my neighbor across the street and my bestie for years and years. She was younger than me by almost four years, and while that age difference bothered our mothers it didn't really bother us. She was my brother's age and they were friends first.

As they got older I think the male/female genes kicked in and my brother drifted toward her brothers and she drifted my way. We spent a lot of years teamed against each other, girls against boys, sisters against brothers. I'm not sure when we really started hanging out together, sometime in grade school, but once we did we were inseparable. I think most of my Indiana memories include Michelle.

We were spent many hours in her basement playing Barbies as youngsters and many hours in my bedroom playing records as teenagers. We invented games outside our house and played imaginary stories inside our houses. We could play for hours on end as both of our imaginations were great. The two of us started all sorts of "companies". We took people on bike tours around our neighborhood pretending streets were countries and telling all sorts of untrue historical facts. We started a Mickey Mouse Club and met in our garage with the other neighborhood kids were we learned how to properly hold and pass scissors or whatever that day's show had taught. We once ran away together, all of our belongings packed up, and spent hours hiding out, playing, and plotting our futures in the woods not far from our house. When we realized our mothers, who had longed offered to pack us bags when we threatened to run away, were not coming for us we eventually decided we would wait until we were older to venture out on our own and we trudged back home.

She was my right hand. She was fiercely loyal and kept all of my secrets. She was my first critic and editor listening to me read and reading everything I ever wrote. We had a special language we used to communicate around our brothers and we had inside jokes that cracked us up while everyone around us thought we were nuts. We had moments where we fought and hated each other, but we always found our way back in just a couple of days. We shared everything and anything and were with each other through all of our first life's events until she left for college to spread her wings. I can remember driving with her mother to drop her off and then driving back without her, knowing that life would never be the same.

It wasn't. She was finally out from under my thumb, living her own life and finding her way. I was still at home lost, without my shadow, and jealous she was moving on without me. She found love. I moved away. The letters we wrote gradually stopped. I kept in touch with her life through my parents, always feeling like a proud parent to hear about her success, but too proud to reach out to tell her so.

Social media and the death of our fathers brought us back into contact. While our youth and young adult selves know each other very well our older selves are learning about each other through the Internet. She reads my blog faithfully just as she always did with anything I wrote, and I have never forgotten my promise to her if ever I publish a book; she gets the dedication.

Happy Birthday Mickey Sue. Thank you for all the wonderful years of friendship. Please know that I cherish those years and am so grateful for having had you in my life. You and your family will always hold a special place in my heart and contributed to the person I am today. May your day be filled with all of the happiness and wonder you gave me.