My childhood best friend
I don’t know how I’d connect with someone I didn’t know in real life on AIM back in 2003, but I did, and her name was Sara. She went to the same small middle school as me, but she was in 6th grade and I was in 7th. As we started talking, she invited me over to stay the night right away. I’d like to say the rest was history, we remained the best of friends forever, but no story is ever so simple, and neither is this one. It was that simple in the beginning, though.
Weekends were spent at Sara’s spacious house adorned with natural wood floors and banisters. On Friday nights after their band practiced, her older brother Steve would bring home Little Caesars pizzas and we’d sneak away with whatever was left over. (The same was true somehow of Steve’s clothes, too). Saturday mornings were early wake-ups, where Sara’s dad would make us pancakes at the breakfast bar on a griddle and Sara’s mom would pack a cooler of diet sodas and sandwiches for us to eat wherever we would end up for Sara’s older brother Dave’s wrestling meets. Sara’s mom would teach us a secret language she and her best friend made up called ibi jibi and we’d spend our Saturdays in some deserted high school hallway mastering it.
We’d decorate white tank tops with puffy paint for concerts, walk the puppy Sara was training to be a service dog, listen to sappy country music, sneak out her window to hang out on the vantage point of the garage’s rooftop, curl our hair for bedroom photo sessions. Sara got a pet bunny then that became my heart’s desire, which inspired adopting the two bunnies we have now. I went to Florida with her whole family for spring break which was a monumental milestone for someone like me who didn’t travel much. I was also around when her parents divorced, when we started doing split weekends over at her mom’s apartment across the state. Her mom became such a powerful influence to me, I listed her as one of the “little wild mothers” in episode 8 of my podcast, Soul Over the Bones. It seems like all of my best memories during that time were with her and her family. I secretly hoped Sara and I would remain best friends like her mom and her mom’s best friend Dorothy who introduced us to my still favorite movie to this day, When Harry Met Sally.
While logically I understand that moving to high school and leaving my best friend behind in middle school is an awkward transition for anyone, how we ever ended up drifting apart is still a wonder to me. It’s a friendship that was so pivotal to me that I still make references to things that we said and did, like mile markers of time passed, to this day.
Thankfully that wouldn’t be the last time Sara and I connected. I showed up to support her at her boyfriend’s funeral just after high school, curled her hair to go to a dance after that. She visited me and my family in California as she and her husband made the drive to move out there, when my kid was only 3. We’ve texted sporadically as she moved back to Michigan, then I did. When Sara saw my baby, 8 years after the first time, she cried.
Three years since moving back, after watching her own beautiful family grow, I finally had the opportunity to meet back up in person and take photos of them in-home. Though it was as completely different people, who have lived many different lives since the beach days, the singing backstreet boys in the car at the top of our lungs days, the matching floral mini skirts days, the NO AD sunscreen days, still it feels like we know each other just the same now. I showed up to her house and saw kettlebells sitting in the driveway, and while I couldn’t find the house number, I knew because I know Sara, that that was where she lived.
It didn’t take long for her, her beautiful children, and their puppy to roll out their welcome, spilling down the front porch, clamoring to see me. I allowed some stories in my head about all the time that’s passed to make me feel a little nervous before I arrived, but was relieved to have them dissipate as soon as Sara wrapped me up in a hug. I followed her oldest around, doing as the oldest so often does, giving me a tour around the house, the backyard, the basement, the neighborhood. We left no stone unturned. She showed me her doll named Ruby, and I told her that when I was almost my own kid’s age, her mom and I would play with dolls and I would call mine Gracie because that’s what I wanted to name my daughter one day. Her second oldest did as the second oldest so often does and hid away from the camera, favoring play, exploration and casting me furtive glances with a mischievous grin. Her third, the baby, did as the third, the baby so often does and was completely angelic and played to the camera the entire time. He was effortless, irresistible to photograph. Sara was as mothers like Sara so often are and was beautiful, powerful, nurturing, and warm, and it showed both in front of my camera and in the resulting images. I left that in-home session feeling like I always do when leaving a photoshoot, an out-of-body transcendence that makes me remember without a doubt that this is what I’m meant to do.
You don’t ever stop caring for the person you sang along to Hanson (at far beyond their prime) with. Mae Martin once said on the Handsome podcast, “Old friends remind you who you are, it’s very grounding because you reconnect with old versions of yourself.” The fact that someone as good as Sara could love someone as troubled as I was in middle school makes me find it in my heart to forgive and love that version of myself, too.
