My Best Friend

As I've eluded to, or rather fully acknowledged, my best friend and I grew up together. Sarah was born exactly a year and a month after me, emerging into a family where cliques were already forming due to age gaps and personalities. She was born with a full head of ebony Mohawk Indian hair, a savage baby. Starkly different from my own light puffs of blonde fuzz. I wish I could say one-year-old Barb remembered her birth, but to be honest, my life as I remember it has always had Sarah in it.

Sarah grew from that savage little Mohawk into an awkward preteen. Her wild, long hair was tied back into a low ponytail in order to alleviate her eyes from the constant curtain of brown. Full, round glasses sat on her nose, trying to swallow her face whole. Her bright brown eyes were wide behind them, eager to soak in as much information and knowledge as she could.

Sarah and I are complete opposites. We definitely have different features. She takes after Robin, our Father, with her dark hair and uproarious laugh. Her legs were always longer than mine and her features darker. Her complexion was always better than mine, since her skin was smooth and rarely tarnished. My hair has always been a very light brown, almost blonde, to which I've colored countless times. My nose is a button, whereas hers is a proper nose--- there is no other way to describe it.

We also have very different perspectives on life. Sarah eyes success as studying hard to obtain the end goal. She prides herself in the work she is able to accomplish and always puts her best foot forward. As for me, I tend to set goals outside of studies and put my efforts into those. School was never the number one priority on my mind, but for Sarah, it usually was. And that worked for her.

But, even with our differences, we have the time of our lives together. We've spent entire Saturday  nights laughing so hard we thought our stomachs would burst. We stayed up late into the night, talking about serious matters of importance, like Y2K, and silly matters of nonsense, like where we wanted our honeymoon to be. We fought and cried and yelled, but we loved and smiled and laughed together much more.

As kids, we would all gather in one of our huge yards or bedrooms and play silly games together. We'd use the creative juices that we each accumulated and create a game that would consume entire afternoons.

One fantastic game that we'd play often was "Boy and Girls." Sarah would always have to be the boy since she was the youngest girl. Evelyn (the oldest sibling I played with on a regular basis) and I would be the pretty girls, strutting down the driveway as we'd try to catch the attention of the strapping boy, aka Sarah. We'd make Sarah choose who she liked best. Poor Sarah had to endure this game countless times. But she was a great boy and for that I am appreciative.

But there was one game in particular that Sarah shone in---

Mrs. Thirteen Claws.

But let's set the scene.

The bedroom we lived in as kids wasn't all that large. (It did fit up to 5 girls at one point-- but not until the youngest was a toddler.) Two bunk beds sat prestigiously across from each other, pushed up against the walls. The bunk bed to the right reached all the way up to the ceiling, creating a small space between it and the mattress. That was my bed-- Sarah slept in the top bunk opposite, a shorter, but sturdier, bunk. We loved that room.

When night crept up, that room and those bunks were our play haven.

Sarah would lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, when suddenly:

"Sarah. Sarah. Psst!" As she sat up, a twisted sheet, like a rope, flew in her direction, the knot at the end hitting her body. Stifling giggles, she grabbed the sheet excitedly, sat up and secured her heels against the bed's side board. The twins, thought to have been asleep beneath us, would watch us in jealousy, eager to get in our our game.

On the cold nights of winter, after our Father or Mother said our prayers with us and sang us a song or two, Sarah crawled up onto my bunk bed. With her she brought her two large quilts and pillow. In the nip of the winter, we'd huddle together beneath a mound of blankets, talking about everything. One thing we loved to talk about was the future. We planned to live together in a big house when we grew up, having parties and doing anything we wanted. It was my favorite topic with Sarah.

Most of the time, those snuggle sessions would end in a fight. One of us would get upset and I would order her to leave my bed. But, the next morning, we would go back to being the best of friends.

It was high school, though, that truly built a lasting and loving relationship between the two of us.

Our highschool was a barely restored seminary that stretched out against the fielded green of Granby, Massachusetts. The halls were long, narrow corridors, enough space for two single lines of students could stream through in between classes. When our teachers let us out of class, we would tumble into that hallway, squeezed next to and behind and in front of our fellow Catholic schoolmates.

These halls were made for Sarah and me.

First, we'd catch each other's eye from opposite ends of the hall, seeking each other out through bobbing heads and stuffed backpacks. Then, one of us would shriek in excitement, completely oblivious to the hall stuffed with sardined students. As soon as we got close enough to each other, all traffic would come to a screeching halt-- we grabbed each other in a furious and hyper embrace, shouting proclamations of our love for each other.

I loved my Junior and Senior year purely because I got to share the hallways with Sarah.

As we came home from track practice, we immediately headed to the kitchen, grabbed the daily crossword from the newspaper caught underneath my napping dad's hands as they rested on his belly, put a pot of tea on the stove, and promptly plopped down at the kitchen table. Frozen fig newtons and pencils in our hands, we conquered that crossword together every day, laughing uproariously together.

But, as promised, Sarah was the greatest at one thing... Mrs. Thirteen Claws.

Mrs. Thirteen Claws was a vicious and horrid babysitter that we concocted. She was always trying to catch you with her long, awful claws--probably to eat you or destroy your childhood in some sort of clawed way.

Her victims always were the children she was "babysitting." Sarah stood outside of our large, bunk bed-filled bedroom, snarling:

"I'm Mrs. Thirteen Claws!"

Shrieking and bursting with laughter and falsified fear, my playmate of the day and I scurried up my bunk bed,  screaming at Mrs. Thirteen Claws to stop. Sarah climbed noisily after us, swiping at us with her imaginary claws. The chase would continue until Sarah tired of her role, Evelyn or Joe and I bounding across the bed on our hands and knees as Sarah cornered us.

Sarah is, without a shred of doubt, my very best friend.

Summer Swelter

The weather we have now in Massachusetts brings me back to the sweltering days of summer when the only things I had to worry about were where my water shoes were located and how to find that blackberry bush without anyone following me and getting to all the ripe berries.

You have no idea how fantastic a summer berry bush is. Just behind our Barn was the juiciest and most abundant blackberry bush in all of Granby. Heck, it just might have been the best in all of Western Massachusetts. One summer I had discovered the ripened berries alone.

It was amazing.

That day, I had been pretending that a television camera was following me around, documenting my every move and opinion. We didn't have a television growing up, so, to me, watching television was a great honor-- not to mention actually starring on it. I was just finishing showing my "audience" the art of a pogo stick, when I suddenly remembered that berry bush. Yelping with personal delight, I threw the pogo stick to the ground, and, in a hushed, hoarse whisper, I told my imaginary cameraman:

"Follow me!"

Our Barn, as dilapidated as it was, held mystery and fascination for us Powell kids. If you circle round back the sagging building, you'll see the tall, hallowed phenomenon known as The Silo.  (If you don't know what a Silo is, I'm afraid you have little frame of reference to my childhood.) Just before the Silo was a clutter of trees that swallowed the side of the Barn.  But only one tree was special.

Hidden against her own kind, my Tree stood, anchored to the ground, her swaying branches dancing with her Spirit. Her seeds draped down from the budding wood,  her silken, green hair slipping through her branching fingertips. I felt love for my Tree. She was my caretaker, the shoulder I could cry on when no one else could possibly understand. She held me as I wrote nonsense and dreams in my black-and-white-marble composition notebook. She watched me as I gazed out toward the back fields and then hugged me as I thought of all the things I was going to accomplish in my life. When I climbed up her trunk onto her lap and shoulders and in her arms, I was safe. I was understood. And even though it looked like I was alone, I was not.

My cameraman followed me as I passed my Tree and came to the very back of the Barn. Immediately behind the building and in front of the berry bush was a large pile of decaying wood, old boards and scraps that had been thrown together after countless of farm projects over the years. I was tentative to walk there that day. The previous year, I had fallen victim to a swarm of bees that had hidden quite sneakily beneath a board. I had misstepped, angering them. As a small child, I was blanketed by the buzzing monsters, stung repeatedly, over and over. Had I been allergic, I would have died that day. Just like that little boy in  that movie "My Girl." Tragic.

As I avoided the wood and board pile, I finally approached the blackberry bush. There, on every possible branch, clusters of berries awaited me. Without a bucket to place them in, I began to grab at them, stuffing my mouth with the deliciousness of solitary and fruit.