Do You Remember?

     A childhood friend of mine got married in June. Our parents met and became friends when I was three years old, and she was two. From then on, our parents remained excellent friends, and this girl and I saw each other very frequently. Growing up, we were best friends and practically inseparable. As teenagers, this friendship went a little to the wayside, and eventually her family moved to another country for a few years. Now the family is back and our parents are in contact again, but she stayed behind and has begun to build a family of her own.

            I didn’t go to her wedding. Life was busy on my end and money would have become a significant issue. But I thought a lot about our childhood. We did absolutely everything together, and I came up with many significant memories that I am sure she also holds dear today.

            Our families would get together frequently for dinners and such, but each time the two of us somehow thought that a sleepover was the only real way we could have the most fun together. She grew up in Quebec, which meant we had to cross the bridge from Ontario in order to get to her house. It felt at times like another world. She had a huge in-ground pool. I loved pools as a kid, especially the huge ones. This one had a diving board, and we would swim for hours and do all sorts of pre-Olympic tricks off the board. But every time, at the end of the visit when our parents were beginning to say their goodbyes, my friend and I would run into a corner of her property and put our heads and hearts into praying that our parents would agree to a sleepover.

            Both of us grew up with the knowledge that prayer is important, that God always hears our prayers, even if He does not always answer them the way we want Him to. My friend and I were convinced that if we prayed, God would convince our parents. However, we somehow knew that we needed to put forth some sort of an effort on our part in order to get exactly what we were hoping for. Both of us knew the “weak spots” of our parents. We knew exactly how to ask and when the perfect opportunity was.

We almost always had our sleepovers.

            I remember one year both our families went to a family camp. The campground was located on a forest in front of a lake or some sort of river front. We had to walk through another campground in order to get to the actual beach. We were fairly young. Maybe ten or eleven. One night our dads took all of the kids to the beach after dinner and we stayed there until dark, swimming and playing in the water to our hearts’ content. On the way back, we all piled into the trunks of the two vans and swung our legs over the edge as they slowly drove us home. I think we were singing all sorts of “Sound of Music” songs. Julie Andrews was our favourite.

            Or what about that crazy adventure that our dads planned to scare us all out of our wits. All in good fun of course. I don’t remember why exactly they did it. All I remember is they took us into the woods after dark. They used flashlights and were talking to themselves about all sorts of creepy things. I vaguely remember them stopping nervously when twigs snapped somewhere nearby.

            There was an abandoned cabin close to the waterfront. It was unlocked. I have no idea why we never noticed this before. But inside there was a lot of storage covered in huge white sheets, and the building itself was very old. It was like something out of a movie. All of a sudden, something underneath one of the sheets in the corner moved. All of us screamed and ran out. Now that I think of it, I have no idea if our dads were laughing or screaming, but they ran out behind us anyways. Do you remember?

            We kept walking through the woods as if nothing happened. I just remember being terrified but extremely curious. We came across another cabin, much smaller and more dilapidated than the first. (Did you ever wonder why these cabins were there?) It had graffiti all over it. Our dads told us a story about a little girl who was kidnapped and hidden in this cabin. The graffiti was her warning to any other children passing by; the broken windows and overturned furniture were from her many attempts to escape. I think at one point your dad disappeared, only to reappear and try to freak us out later on. Both of them were laughing. Somehow, I think the whole thing was a joke. 

            We were probably seven or eight years old, maybe nine, when our families went to another camp. It was basically a farm with smaller cabins. There was a swimming pool behind the main house. That’s where Richard lived. He was so nice, and he always played games with us. I think his job was to take care of the property, because I only remember him cutting the grass with his lawn mower.

This of course is an important detail. You see, my friend and I loved sugar. What kid doesn’t? After one of Richard’s stories, he took a box of sugar cubes out of his room and gave us one each. I had never seen a sugar cube before, and it was so good I just had to have another one. Were you with me that day when we decided to sneak one or two from his room? I just remember looking out the window and seeing him on his lawnmower. We were safe. We snuck into his room and found the box in his top dresser drawer. With a handful of sugar cubes each, we were all set. We fled from the scene. Of course, neither of us thought about the obvious evidence left behind…two or three rows of sugar cubes gone from the box is surely noticeable. He never said anything to us though, although he never offered us more sugar.

 My family moved to the country when I was nine. My friend and I continued to see each other, although not as frequently, since we lived further apart. But her family always came to our house and slept over on Canada Day. In our backyard, we put up tents and the girls would sleep in one, the boys in another. Our goal was to stay up all night. I was desperate to see the sun rise and be able to boast that I had stayed awake all night. This remained our ambition at all our sleepovers.

We worked out shifts. Two at a time had to stay awake for an hour while the others slept, only to be up an hour in turn. This worked for a couple hours, but eventually we were all asleep when the dawn arrived. Except once. We were in the screened-in-porch behind my house. We had managed to stay awake until about 5am, playing Indian poker and all sorts of silly games. We were safe outside because our parents couldn’t hear us. In the house, we would always be told to keep our voices down, which made staying awake harder. At least that night, we only annoyed the neighbours, not our parents.

But at the end of that night, I remember the sky turning pink. I think you had fallen asleep. Actually the others had too. For some reason I think I was the only one awake. It was a surreal moment. I saw a beautiful blue heron fly over the property and settle in the neighbour’s backyard. There was a gentle mist over the field, the trees were barely moving; everything was still. I heard the first bird wake up and give its little trill. Then I fell asleep for a couple hours. But I had made it to the dawn. I was pleased.

I lived on a three acre property; big according to my standards, but not as big as the neighbouring 76 acre property. Still, there were two acres of forest that were mine. I call it mine because I made it mine. I knew the property like the back of my hand. There were trails and a small hut my dad had built at the back. There was a tree fort in the front. A true tree fort; the kind that requires a ladder to get into; that is built with four walls and a roof; that has a floor you can stand on without falling through; that is in a tree. It was our very own tree fort. My siblings and I loved it. The woods had something comforting and soothing about it that every kid dreams of, that most kids read about, that few kids have. But I had it.

We both loved Anne of Green Gables, my friend and I. Anne had named all the places she loved: Lover’s Lane, the Lake of Shining Waters, the Haunted Wood. My friend and I decided one day to name things in my forest. There was an arch made from a fallen tree, with moss growing all over its ancient trunk. It looked like a fairy arch. It sounded like one too, with all the chickadees flocking about it and making their little music. (Do you remember?) I think we called it Chickadee Arch. We weren’t very original.

Or the sand bridge. It was right in the middle of the trail. It had originally been a major dent, which became a swamp most times of the year, and was only passable during the summer or if you owned a pair of rubber boots. My dad built the bridge with wheelbarrows of sand, piles of old rocks from a garden that we rebuilt, damaged books and magazines that were not worth keeping, and all sorts of odds and ends (all environmentally friendly, of course). Each week, my dad, one of my brothers, or myself would cut the grass throughout the one acre of forest-free land we had. This took a couple of hours each Saturday. The other kids had to rake up the grass clippings, and fill up the wheelbarrow. Each week, the sand bridge took shape, as grass pile after grass pile filled in the spaces. Then we covered it with sand and had our bridge. I think my friend and I were the ones who named it “the sand bridge.” Perhaps so we could remember the name. Again, not very original. But there it was all the same. The swamp was still there, but the bridge made it passable.

We had a secret garden. My mom called it that. It was literally secret in the summer because big trees arching over the opening made it difficult to see from the house. Inside, it was basically a sand pit surrounded by a garden that took care of itself. It was full of tiger lilies and poplar trees, surrounded by the forest. One of the trails in the woods led into it; another came from the actual lawn, but was hidden from view. As kids, we played in the sand with toy dump trucks and tractors. The sand hole was deep, and we would bury each other to the waist. We did that a lot until someone lost a boot and we had to get dad to help us find it. As we grew older, it remained “the secret garden;” the hole remained untouched, surrounded by plastic trucks and pails; but it was our sanctuary, and a secret one. I would go there and listen to the wind. When my friend was with me, we would listen to the wind together, sharing our secrets with nobody to hear us.

My friend is married now, but I know she remembers. I was going to tell her all about these memories I had found in a side folder in my brain, but I think it is easier to write it down and have her come across it in print one day. She has a similar side folder somewhere. I’m sure she takes it out once and awhile and looks it over, as I do. Both of us loved stories, and I think we both still do. What better way to be part of a story of friendship; two lives making way for each other, remembering, even when life takes us elsewhere.