Do you remember your first friendship?
Judy was mine.
She had straw-coloured hair and a fleet of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She’d made mud pies with her sturdy five-year-old hands, sucked on the stems of soursobs and held court with a babbling monologue.
She’d share her warm, happy, chaotic heart with me as she ran, climbed, jumped, crawled, skipped over every surface.
She’d skin her knees, stain her shorts and scuff her red sandals.
She’d venture to the end of the street where the mad woman lived in a fibro shack surrounded by weeds and then venture up the street to the haunted house where a son had shot his father dead. My mother wouldn’t allow such free-spirited behaviour, but Judy’s mother had simply laughed at her daughter’s antics.
On hot summer nights, Judy and I had lain on her backyard lawn and gazed into the inky, twinkly heavens. It was the only time Judy was silent. I’d float and merge with the stars, disappearing like a helium balloon untethered.
Before my family moved house to the south of Adelaide where the sea breezes promised better health, I’d said ‘goodbye’ to my neighbour Judy for the last time. Before getting into the car, Judy had leant over and kissed my cheek. I’d let the kiss dry there and did not wash my face for days. Eight years of friendship had been an entire lifetime.
I knew there’d be no-one else like Judy.
My cousins were similar ages and some of them counted as friends. The main aim of school holidays was to ride our bikes around the bland, suburban neighbourhood. Hours and hours of roaming far and wide to who knew where. Fortunately we were never lost.
On rainy days we wrote letters to the fairies at the bottom of the garden, played competitive card or board games – Monopoly and Squatter were favourites – watched TV or saw a movie. We’d eat Vegemite sandwiches for lunch and at night my uncle read bedtimes stories. Sometimes we bickered when boredom got the better of us. Most of the time we were frenemies.
Perhaps it’s common among gifted children to naturally gravitate towards adults. Not to befriend them necessarily, but to identify with them as if they were peers. I experienced this affinity with my netball coach, Eileen. I looked forward to seeing her. Something about her made me feel safe, happy, and keen to improve.
Eileen told me that I had ‘good hand-eye coordination’. High on the opium of praise, I practiced goal throwing for hours at home, in the backyard by the apricot tree. My father had erected a post and goal ring, requiring buckets of cement. While striving for perfection, I scored a stress-fracture in my foot.
When I suffered an asthma attack, Eileen kindly said, ‘There, there. Have a rest now. We’ll need you in the next game.’
Even though I sprained my ankles, sprained my thumbs and sprained my wrists I remained determined to shine for Eileen. The rough canvas shoes I wore caused blood blisters on my heels, soles, and toes. During winter we played in the rain, wearing clear plastic tunics to protect our pleated uniforms. I sickened with bouts of bronchitis but that didn’t deter my love of the game.
Eileen was forced to resign as coach because church officials, who organised the netball competition, said she was living in sin. When I heard the news, a needle pierced my ten-year-old heart. I asked my mother what living in sin meant. My mother said, ‘You’ll understand when you’re older.’
I never saw Eileen again, except in my dreams. Bound in ribbons, she drifted along the bottom of the sea wearing a netball uniform. I worried that her soul was beyond saving.
I knew there’d be no-one else like Eileen.
My first piano teacher, Mrs Fletcher, also felt like a kindred spirit.
During lessons she was glued to an orange swivel chair. She wore red lipstick and red lacquer on her nails. Her helmet of black hair framed a long, pallid face. Diamonds sparkled on her left hand.
I imagined being Mrs Fletcher or, at least, being her daughter. I imagined teaching world-famous proteges and establishing a music school for the gifted. I imagined hearing her lyrically say, ‘Oh that was beautiful!’ for the rest of my life.
Mrs Fletcher advised me about important matters. Placing a finger between her brows, she said, ‘You mustn’t pluck the hair here. It’ll make your skin puffy.’
I took note because I knew that puffiness was bad, especially under the eyes or chin or around the ankles. My grandmother referred to my ankles as ‘racehorse ankles’ and I didn’t know whether that was a good thing. I’d never won a race. I knew I had ‘weak ankles’ and that was a bad thing.
‘We may never be beauty queens,’ Mrs Fletcher told me, ‘But we can always improve our skills.’
Four blissful years later, my usual ‘A’ for the annual piano exam inexplicably sank to a ‘B’. My mother suspected my interest was waning and declared she’d find me a new teacher. Someone who would get results.
When I said goodbye to Mrs Fletcher for the last time, she flinched. I thought of my friend, Judy, and wondered if I should kiss Mrs Fletcher’s cheek but the moment passed. My heart bled.
I knew there’d be no-one else like Mrs Fletcher.
In Grade Three at school, Mrs McEwan read my story out loud to the entire class. I’d written about two orphan kittens and filled a little handmade book with coloured drawings. I observed our two cats, Toulouse and Ashley, for long hours as they slept, twitched, chattered, slunk, yawned, stretched, ate, drank, and washed themselves. Who needed friends when I had these beloved creatures?
Mrs McEwan held my little book out in front of her, moving from side to side like a slowly oscillating fan, showing every page. She said that this was the standard she expected from her students. I held my breath, not believing my eyes, not believing my ears, not believing Mrs McEwan. Up until that moment, I’d been invisible. My heart galloped in my chest as my body lifted from the seat, lighter than air.
In the schoolyard, a group of girls started calling me ‘Goody, goody, Teacher’s Pet’ and later they laughed along with ringleader Cindy, pointing their fingers at me while yelling, ‘Ug-ly! Ug-ly! Ug-ly!’
Out of sight I slumped on a hard wooden bench as tears rolled down my cheeks. Under the seat, tiny pebbles fought the invasion of dandelions.
To avoid Cindy and her cohort, I clung to the peripheries of the schoolyard throughout primary school. Sometimes I hung out with girls on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. Greta, Joanna, and Lesley kept to themselves, sitting at a distance from each other in a dusty, three-sided shed, reading or eating or silently waiting for the siren to recall them back to the classroom.
Because I was told it was important to make friends, I asked Joanna if she would be my friend. Joanna declined. She said she didn’t need a friend. Joanna had to be crazy. I knew that the friendless were as good as dead. Terror made me invite Lesley home after school. I didn’t exactly like Lesley, but I did not dislike her either. Lesley was as bland as the colour beige and as comforting as cheese.
Out of the blue, Jenny invited me to her home. Jenny lived at the bottom of my street with her two brothers in a cream brick house. They ran around the backyard barefoot, playing tag. Then one of Jenny’s brothers grabbed my sandal and threw it onto the roof of the house shouting, ‘Let’s see if it’s a boomerang!’
Shocked, I watched the brothers laugh. Jenny stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the roof of the house, mouth open. Her brother was about to throw my other sandal when their mother emerged from the house to stop the game. I jammed on my one remaining sandal and fled. Shuffling up the hill to my home, I worried that my mother would be angry. As soon as I crept into the house, she demanded to know why I was missing a sandal. I told her what had happened trying not to cry.
‘We’ll see about that,’ my mother said, launching herself down the street to retrieve the errant sandal.
I didn’t return to Jenny’s house ever again.
At High School, ringleader Naomi did her best to make my life a living hell with her wicked whispers and taunts. She dated the captain of the football team, so her status was indisputable. She was blond, ‘well-developed’ and outspoken, while I was too tall, too socially awkward and too slow to develop. I wore ugly braces on my teeth, top and bottom. My brown hair was too thin and too hard to control despite brushing it at recess and lunch time every day.
I continued to cling to the perimeters, avoiding Naomi and her gang, and finding other misfits who needed someone to talk to. I didn’t know why Naomi had it in for me. Perhaps I was unlucky. Perhaps I had a target on my back. Perhaps there was something wrong with me.
Of course, there was something wrong with me.
English teacher Mr Brown chewed gum and looked like a rake in his shabby, oversized beige suit. He carried a worn leather satchel which had nothing in it, not even a lunch box as far as I could tell. He didn’t wear a watch or a wedding band or a tie. In one hand he always held a curled, tattered paperback with pages the colour of tea. Perhaps that was all he needed in his life.
When he gave the class a writing assignment he’d lean back in his seat, toss one leg over the other, absently rub the bristle on his chin, squint, and hold the book out in front of him. Sometimes he’d grunt, sigh, or lurch as if he’d read something gobsmacking.
When Mr Brown talked, he filled the spaces in my fifteen-year-old head and heart with compelling ideas, subtle meaning, and an enduring harmony, symphonic in its magnitude.
I knew there’d be no-one else like Mr Brown.
Mr Lewis became my first mentor of sorts. Tall, thin, Mr Lewis with his mane of auburn hair and neat goatee radiated enthusiasm for Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. For Year 11 drama classes, I lined up to audition for The Pirates of Penzance. Instead of landing a role, Mr Lewis asked me to be his secretary. He explained that he needed someone to take notes throughout the rehearsals, documenting his thoughts, ideas, reflections.
During rehearsals I sat at the front of the room, paper and pen ready on a trestle table. It felt odd to be sitting so prominently, as if I was important. I was usually a back row student.
The operetta’s manuscript was laid open on the table, to my right. Sometimes Mr Lewis turned the pages. Sometimes I did if Mr Lewis was lost in thought. He was lost in thought a lot with the lids of his eyes half-mast and a hand propped under his chin, stroking his goatee. Sometimes he would stab the manuscript with his pale forefinger to locate a problem and stop the rehearsal. I took note of the bar, phrase, page.
He often leant over and muttered something long and convoluted about a new choreography, a need for syncopated precision in a certain verse, a chorus line lacking the appropriate verve or gesture, a costume alteration, a prop that needed a splash of paint, ideas about a mixture of topics ranging from music to movement to performance. Intrigued by what he was thinking, I wrote as fast as I could to faithfully record his words, filling several pages. As he rifled through them, Mr Lewis would say, ‘You’re saving the day, my dear.’
Somehow my brain fused with Mr Lewis’s because I began to predict his thoughts, what he needed to change, how something could improve. It was as if I was becoming the director myself as movement slowed and morphed into a single point of focus. I was connected to some sort of flow and a harmony beyond human ears.
Before my eyes, the musical production improved. The process was magical, joyous, inspiring. I tapped my toes and nodded my head, knowing every word, every step, every milestone that had made the performance a triumph. I could have hugged the world.
I knew there’d be no-one else like Mr Lewis.
Friendships have been such a fraught and fantastic part of my life so I’ll pick up the thread again soon.
I wonder about your friendships at school or outside of school. Perhaps a neighbour or a family relative you were close to. What impact have friendships had on you, negative or positive? Growing up, have you had healthy adult relationships despite a big age gap? What did you discover about relationships from these early experiences?
Thank you very much for joining me on this voyage into the past.
I’ll be here at the same time, same place next week.
With love,
Lil X
PS Thank you so much for being here with me, it means the world. A big thank you to my paid subscribers who are so generously supporting my writing. Thank you for liking this post and giving me a little thrill each time!
Gifted Friendships (Part One)