For my friend, Kim, who doesn't talk politics online

A few days ago my friend, Kim Shakeri, posted this on facebook:

"Loralee, remember this? It's not dated, but you write inside that
you and Bruce were "going steady" and Melanie's daughter Stephanie was just born. Does that help with the year?"

(Actually, Kim, that tells me almost the exact date. Stephanie was born on August 18, 1985. I said the 19th on facebook, but I was one day off. Bruce and I had our first kiss the day after Stephanie was born—that was on the 19th.)

The funny thing is that I've been thinking about Kim a lot lately. She must have felt the vibes and started looking through her old stuff, and found this card.

It's also funny that the caption on the front of the card still says it all: "I would have written sooner BUT..."

...but I still just feel like I have nothing to say. I feel that way most of the time. But I'd like to be writing, so today I'm going to talk about Kim and me (...myself?).

I was kind of a lonely little kid for a while. My older sister, Melanie, didn't like me for a long time. You'd think that the baby of the family, the only girl after five boys, who held that prime position for five years, would have been thrilled to have an adorable baby sister to dote on just like everyone else did.
But, no. Melanie wasn't very nice to me a lot of the time, for a long time.

Look how cute they all were!
Notice how none of them can stop staring at their darling baby sister! What was Melanie's problem?! ;-)

The girl I played with the most when I was little was probably Kelma. She lived around the corner from us, was my age, and our moms were friends; it was a predestined friendship until her family moved around the time we were in first or second grade.

I had another friend, Wendy, who was there at the same time as Kelma, but she lived a little further away—around the block which, I guess, was a little too far for me to roam by my six-year-old self. Wendy was an on and off  best friend: there were long periods (probably anywhere from a couple of days to a week!) when she was "never going to talk to me again!" for some offense or other. Little girl drama.

Wendy shocked me one day when we were maybe nine or ten,  and had been on good speaking and playing terms. As I remember it, she asked me who my best friend was; I said she was. Then she told me that I was not her best friend; her best friend was Natalie—who didn't even go to the same school as us! (I didn't even know where Natalie lived; she visited in our classroom a few times that year... Hm. I guess that was kosher back then.) My poor little feelings were very hurt that day.

Still, Wendy was the friend I played with the most. We played at each others' houses, had sleep-overs, caught horny toads together... when we were being friends.

But in sixth grade Kim Shakeri moved into the neighborhood. This was destiny! We had a slow start, but once we got together we were pretty much inseparable. We were both in the highest groups in our school classes, had the same fairy-tale visions of how life should be, and... we just really hit it off. We did practically everything together through sixth and seventh grades. Summers were sad—for me—because she spent them in California with her dad. We wrote each other pretty regularly—not only as ourselves, but as each character of the games we played together. Getting back together in the fall was sweet!

1979
Not just to me, from Kim, but all of our aliases too.
And, a 15-cent stamp.

And then the terrible thing happened: Kim moved to California to live with her dad permanently.

Now, eighth grade is an ugly time. It just is. Kids are growing up enough to try to figure out who they really are, and how they really fit in, but they are just not very good at it. It was a really ugly year for me because I'd literally just "lost" my best friend.

(Fortunately for me, Melanie and I started to be good friends around the time Kim left.)

I had other friends at school, but not a "come to my house and share all my secrets" kind of friend. Well, there was one girl, Rachael, who could have come close...except that her mom thought that a house with five big brothers—the youngest of them twenty years old, and two of them who were sailors!—was not the place she wanted her little girl to hang out. We saw the insides of each others' houses maybe three times in the five years we knew each other.

Even though I adored dance and piano before, I think Kim's going away may have pushed me into full immersion. At the end of that eighth grade year I auditioned to be the ballet pianist at my dance school, and got the job. When ninth grade started I spent every day, from 4:00 to 10:00—from 3:30 to 6:30 on Fridays—at the dance studio. I was either in a class or accompanying one. (I had an hour break on most days, when there was a tap or jazz class that I wasn't in, but it wasn't enough time to run home or go hang out with a friend. My friends at the studio were my two sisters and LeAnn, who was my teacher and employer. Again, I had plenty of friendly acquaintances there, but...)

Anyway, Kim and I were reduced from "inseparables" to "pen-pals." And I was a pretty lousy pen-pal. I know this because I was going through a box of "Letters from Kim" today, and one-third to one-half of her letters to me started with something like, "I was starting to think I'd never hear from you again!" (Sorry, Kim.)

The strawberry stationery: July 21, 1986
"Dear Loralee, Well. So you are no longer among the missing."
Oh, man!

This was partly because I really didn't know what to write about.
"Reading 'Crime and Punishment' in AP English. Worst book ever."
"Went to dance all night. We're doing pieces from Swan Lake again this year; I'm in Pas de Quatre this time."
"Had a piano lesson on Thursday before I went to dance. Learning 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.'"
...That's pretty exciting stuff right there.

I wasn't super interested in boys yet; Kim was starting to be. I didn't have lots of friends to talk about; Kim did. I hardly watched TV because I was hardly ever home; Kim adores good TV and movies. (Consequently, Kim often asked me what I thought of  this-and-such good-looking actor, and I had no idea who she was talking about.) I listened to classical radio; Kim was talking to me about pop songs and singers. I still loved my dolls and fairy tales; Kim was moving on to real, live people and British literature. I just didn't know what to say, and the longer I went without writing, the more difficult it got.

Despite my own silliness, Kim and I are still friends. She still sends me a Christmas card every year. (I'm crappy at Christmas cards—or any cards...) And she's one of my best facebook friends. I find we are interested in a lot of the same things still—cooking probably taking top spot. She's a little crazy about dogs; I feel a little bit crazy...
 And... She never talks politics online (or COVID-19, these days, which is the same thing). Well, at least I've never seen her talking politics. And I appreciate that so, so much because I am often drowning in it here.

Anyway I've been wondering lately if my life would have been different if Kim had been around while I was a teenager. Kim attracts and keeps friends; I could have been part of that circle. When Melanie, who became my best friend, got married (when I was fifteen) Kim could have been there to still be my best friend. Would I have lived my life in the dance studio, or would I have backed off a little? That's super, super hard to say. It's possible that I would have felt out of place with Kim's new friends, I'd have retreated into the dance studio and, while we'd still be friends, it wouldn't have been the same as before. Who knows?

Kim and her oldest daughter, a few years ago.

At any rate, I'm glad she still considers me a friend now. <3