When I became a mother I figured I would lose some of my freedom and maybe even some of my sleep. I didn't know I would lose my once sharp memory.
There was a time I could remember things as insignificant as what someone was wearing on a particular day. Now I'm lucky if I can remember what my kids wore yesterday.
I could flip through my memory as if it was a photo album and recall what I wanted when I wanted to. Though those days are gone, there are a few memories that have remained crystal clear to me.
My friend Carol and I lived a few blocks from each other and were in the same afternoon kindergarten class. Carol was my ideal of what a girl should look and be like. Her long brown hair hung down to her waist, and she had the all-American face I wanted for myself. She always looked just right.
If Carol was a polished pearl, I was a diamond in the rough. I couldn't stay clean if I was kept under glass. Unlike Carol, I couldn’t color in the lines, glue anything neatly, or cut a straight line to save my life. School never came easy for me, and kindergarten was no exception. It wouldn’t be until years later when my dyslexia was discovered that I knew why everything in school was a struggle. But even at the age of five, I knew something was wrong.
I never felt like a misfit when I was with Carol. She liked me for who I was. If someone smart and pretty like her liked me, how bad could I be?
One day in class, we were working on Valentine's Day cards. I couldn't figure out how to spell the word love and I asked her for help. With the skill and patience my teachers sometimes lacked, she taught me how to spell and write the word on my card. I never forgot how to spell it again.
There was another difference between us. Carol was Catholic, and I wasn't. I got mad at the Catholic Church when the following year she started first grade at Catholic school. We were never classmates again, despite living a few blocks from each other. We rarely saw each other from then on.
I can't remember if my mother used the word cancer when she told me Carol was sick, but I knew it was serious.
I can still see her that Halloween when she came trick-or-treating. Her beautiful long hair was gone, and she had a little granny cap on. But she was on my front stoop smiling and getting her candy like any other kid.
A few months later I went to her birthday party and brought her a Barbie doll. Since I ripped everything unceremoniously out of its package, I thought it was so odd that she wouldn't take the plastic off the doll's hair. Years later, I wondered if she was trying to protect the doll's hair because she couldn’t protect her own.
I was home sick from school the day my mom got the call that Carol died. I was in the third grade and hadn't seen her for at least a year, but I felt the loss. She must have been about nine. The same age my own daughter is now.
It's strange to watch your own children reach the age you were when a significant event happened in your life. All at once you are confronted with your past, present and future.
Carol was in my life for such a short time, but the impression she made on me was very deep. Forty years later, I still remember her every time I spell the word love.
