I remember a lot about the fourth grade. Turning 10 was a big deal, you know, double digits and all. I remember the boy (who I liked from kindergarten until then)actually asked me to "go out" and gave me a necklace, I broke it off the next day because I realized I just wanted to us to be best friends again. I remember indoor recess and dancing to Rumpshaker by Wreckz n Effect and we actually thought it was cool to jump up and down throwing one arm up then the other like crazy monkeys. I remember starting my period and having to go to the nurse, when I got back my teacher summoned me to her desk and told me she was so proud and excited for me, then gave me a pack of skittles. Of course, everyone wanted to know why I had gotten skittles. For the record, if you are a teacher and that happens, down play it as much as possible. To sum it up, fourth grade was a big year for me, but the most life changing thing that happened was meeting my best friend.
When I was little I used to watch Anne of Green Gables, I felt a connection with her because of her red hair, and she acted a lot like I did. Anne had, what she called, a "Bosom Buddy", Diana. Although calling my best friend my "Bosom Buddy" sounds ridiculous to me, Amanda is mine. From the moment we met we just clicked. No matter what our differences were we always found a common ground with each other. I remember the first time I spent the night at her house. It was so different than mine. It was cool. She had a young hip single mom who laughed a lot. We slept out on her covered front porch in sleeping bags. Her dog, Lady, was with us. Her mom had so many cool knick knacks. Stuff from the sixties, seventies, eighties. You name it she had it. I remember laughing on that front porch, and finally falling asleep. I remember her mom sitting around the table with her friend Jeff and they were putting together a puzzle, they were always doing puzzles, and teasing us. They were funny and happy, and even though it wasn't like the family I came from, it was a family. I remember her mom picking us up in her car and she would always have a sun dress and sun glasses and she would sing at the top of her lungs, and Amanda would either sing with her or roll her eyes depending on whether or not they were getting a long that day. They were all each other had as far as family goes, and even though it's a beautiful thing, it was also very hard for them. There was no one for her mom to share the load with, and there was no other parent to share the punishment with. Her mom, like many single moms, always had to be both parents. Even though they fought, and boy could they fight, they had a bond with each other that is nothing short of amazing. The memories I have at their home are all immersed with this magical bohemian feel. The feeling of a bigger family. For the first time I was witnessing a family made up of extended friendships. With people like Susan, and Foster, and Gert, and all of the other people that came and were excepted for who they were. Don't get me wrong, not everyone was just invited into the inner circle, the inner circle wasn't just made up of people who were just friends, they were people who had been around for ages, people that were more than friends now. They were family. They were there when things went bad, they counseled and laughed and cried together. They were Amanda's family. The love they had for each other was no less than that. Gertie was the closest. He was always there. He was the cool laid back uncle that always made us laugh. He never got mad at us, never told us to be quiet even though I'm sure we gave him reason to. They had a good time, and the thing I remember the most was laughing. Laughing at each other, laughing with each other, telling stories, or sharing ideas and laughing about them, riding in the car and laughing at Amanda making fun of her mom's singing voice. I remember her mom waking up so early, before any human should wake up on a Saturday, and singing opera. We loved that as teenagers.
If we weren't at Amanda's house, we were at mine. I called her mom mom, and she called my parents mom and dad too. We used to go through my mom's old yearbooks and pick out the prettiest girl and guy. We painted the roses on my bedroom wall. We put together the trampoline I got for my birthday, and we probably have more memories of that trampoline than anything. We figured out half of our life problems on that thing. We used to make up foods from scratch and say we would have our own restaurant one day, and that we would use our last names...then we decided we would use our future husbands' last names "Pitt and Cruise", because she was going to marry Brad, and I was going to marry Tom. I'm not going to lie, we made some pretty amazing concoctions in that kitchen. My parents would always let Amanda come to hockey tournaments that were out of town, and we spent a lot of the time running around the hotel, pretending we were grown up and traveling. We both still have a love for travel and hotels.
When we started middle school, I always hung out with, what Amanda called, the "preps". Amanda didn't care too much for people who thought they were better than other people and tended to scare the living day lights out of the "preps". She didn't put up with any non sense, and had no problem sticking up for herself. I, on the other hand, wasn't a fan of getting my butt kicked. I would be quick to stand up for someone who was getting picked on, but never one to engage in a fight. Point blank, I was scared of getting beat up in front of everyone, and didn't even want to be on the radar of some of these people. Of course, now as a mom I see how silly it was to be afraid, and tell my daughters not to be, but it is totally different when you are there. In any case, Amanda and I were inseparable, until the day of the incident. The ice cream debacle of 1997. It was summer vacation before the ninth grade, and my mom was working and my Dad always had class on Monday nights. No one was ever home until after 4. Amanda called at 2 and said two of her friends, who happened to be boys with a car, wanted us to go with them for ice cream. (seriously, we were going to Dairy Queen). We both knew that neither of our parents would be cool with this idea, but we knew our intentions were true and that we'd have plenty of time to get home and no one would know. I started to get ready and five minutes before they were supposed to be there my Dad came home early from work. Uh oh. I realized I was in a pickle, and improvised. "Dad, can I go get ice cream with Amanda?", "who's taking you?" "Gert said he'd take us", "No, not today". Then I did the whole, please, why, guilt trip and almost had him saying yes, then these two idiots pull up in the driveway bumping rap music and looking like thug wanna be's. "who's this Grace?" It wasn't the loving Grace he called me, it was the one he only says we he is the angriest. He then goes outside and proceeds to tell those boys to get back in their car, that I wasn't going anywhere for a very long time, and when I do it won't ever be with them. I look back and realize that I'm really glad my Dad came home that day, because no 14 year old girl has any business riding in a car with two 16 year old boys she doesn't even know...well, no business riding with 16 year old boys that she does know really. In any case, I never did meet those two boys, and I don't think Amanda ever talked to them again either. Dad immediately grounded me, called Amanda's mom, and told her that we were no longer allowed to talk to one another. It's a funny thing that parents do, and I hope I don't do this, but he had it in his mind that Amanda was a bad influence and that the best thing was to separate us. It was the most miserable two months of our lives. We would sneak and call one another, and we would seriously cry because we missed one another so much. I know it hurt Amanda terribly, because at that point my Dad was like a father figure to her. It was horrible. It was the longest, most boring summer I could remember, and then it was time to start high school.
The first day of high school, the time when kids stop looking like kids and look like mini grown ups, or at least that's what I though back then. The first familiar face I saw was Aaron who went to elementary school and middle school with us. He was a friend of Amanda's too and rode her bus, I asked if he had seen her, I was looking everywhere for her. He said yes that he just showed her where her first class was. I asked him what room number because I had to find her before class started, he gave me the room number of a Spanish class, and low and behold, it was my first class too. I ran to that classroom, and we both freaked out and hugged each other. It remains one of the happiest moments of my life.
It didn't take long for Amanda to get noticed. I think whenever the Bully on campus sees someone who isn't afraid, they take it upon themselves to keep their territory. The girl that did this to Amanda had a rude awakening when she realized that Amanda may have been half her size, but had twice the fight in her. Every pent up angry feeling Amanda had came out in swift kicks to her head. Needless to say, that one fight kept Amanda from ever having to fight anyone in high school again, and by association I never had to fight either. We were totally different in so many ways, from our style to our other friends, but no matter what, no matter who we hung out with, or what happened, we were there for each other. Later on we became friends with another girl who became one of our best friends, and through out high school we were all always together.
Over time we've seen each other cry over boys, we've been there for each other through death, divorce, and we welcomed each other's children into the world. We've seen relationships come and relationships go, even the ones we thought were forever. We've both kept each other from killing our mothers, and hopefully we can talk each other out of killing our teenagers when we get there. We've fought like sisters, and we've loved like sisters too. This week she called me to let me know that Gert just found out he has cancer throughout his entire body. I met up with her and her mom, and we rode into the nursing home to see him. It had been years since we had all been in a car together, and it felt like home. While we visited Gert, and laughed like we used too. I looked at my best friend and saw the love in her eyes for Gert, a man that biologically isn't her father, but was the only father she had growing up, and even though he wasn't a step Dad or Dad he still loved her like she was his. He never had children of his own, and I could see in his eyes that he felt the same about her. All of the memories of cooking out on the front porch and sitting outside at the picnic table, and all memories of them sitting around the table putting together puzzles came back into my mind. Not all families are picture perfect, sometimes families are like puzzles and we have to find the pieces to complete them, but the final picture is just as, if not more beautiful. Amanda, and her mom, and Gert are all pieces in my puzzle. I was not born to them, but found by them, and even though I was blessed by birth with an amazing family, I would be lost without my extended one. There is no way I can put into words how much I love them, and no way to describe how much better my life is because I know them. They have been, and will forever be in my heart.
