Making friends is so very not hard to do. Woo hoo!
by new-endings-old-beginnings on Mar. 07, 2010, under Life
Toga party anyone?
By Lydia Brewer
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?” Recalling first friends from my childhood on a beautiful day like today leaves me humming Mr. Rogers’ sweet song, a song yet to be written back in 1957 when my parents transplanted me from the rolling, green hills of Pennsylvania to the blue-skied Desert Southwest. We moved into the last house on the last street on the southeast corner of Mission Manor near my father’s work at Hamilton Aircraft. Across the street was acre upon acre of mesquite bushes, right up to the fence that marked the edge of the Reservation, the San Xavier Mission easily seen from our house—the lovely white Dove of the Desert.
It was June, school was out, and possibilities for friends were limited by our location and the desert heat. My mother said what all mothers say. “Go outside to play. You won’t find new friends staying in the house.” Actually, for me, she usually tossed “get your nose out of that book” somewhere in that sentence.
Well, there were no kids in the backyard either, so I played out front, drawing pictures with sticks in the dirt. My talented mother had designed a shirt to keep me cool—a backless halter top that tied behind my neck. My very first friend came up behind me from three houses down, shocked, but curious to see this new girl brazenly standing on the sidewalk, apparently topless. I’m Facebook friends with Carol today, but despite my attempts to corrupt her, I don’t think she ever fully recovered from her first impression.
Carol had beautiful long brown straight hair that she kept pulled up into a ponytail—a striking contrast to my frizzy, dishwater-blonde locks. I loved to watch her mother (who had beautiful long gray straight hair) feed their yellow shepherd dog, Sally, food from a can. Sally was the only dog I’d ever seen fed canned dog food, and she not only ate food from a store, she also had biscuits. Imagine that! Cookies for a dog. I no doubt reinforced my feral reputation by eating a few dog biscuits myself.
Across the alley behind us lived a family with two kids. Clarice was 13, and I idolized her teenager-ness when she’d let me hang around. Her younger brother, Mike, was three years older than me, but as Clarice’s little brother, he was still a pest. About five years later, that perspective changed permanently, but that’s a tale for another time.
My next friend was Belinda, who lived on the more rural east side of 12th Avenue. She knew a lady with donkeys we could ride for 50 cents an hour who also kept pigeons she sold for 50 cents apiece. Homing pigeons—a concept I didn’t fully understand at 8 years old. The pigeon lady explained how to clip every other wing feather so they wouldn’t escape, but either I was a poor student, or she was a poor teacher. The pigeon would fly away, and back we’d go for another 50-cent pigeon which looked remarkably like the last escapee.
Despite the absence of drifts of autumn leaves to kick through, the day after Labor Day I began the two-mile daily trek to Mission Manor Elementary where my now berry-brown self met more new friends, more new neighbors. It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood!
