I only have one memory of my first day of school. It was the
trauma of leaving home. It wasn’t my first look at a classroom. It was a skirt.
A long skirt billowing in the wind. The warm afternoon sun on our backs. And
the knowledge that the breeze blowing the skirt was warm too. It was the skirt
of the first friend I’d ever made on my own. I don’t even know how it happened,
how we became friends. I think she’d just introduced herself. Maybe that’s when
it happened. But I remember the warm breeze blowing her skirt, the skirt of my
best friend—my first friend, while we waited to board the bus to go home. She
lived a few streets away from me. And I remember being proud, proud that I had
made a friend.
I just came back from visiting with her; we’re both about to
turn 30 sometime next year. We’re not close like when we were little. But it’s
still good to see her. To laugh together and make jokes. It was wonderful.
Our memories are like webs. Follow a strand far enough and
you’ll remember more and more as you come across each intersecting thread. Our
minds are incredible like that. If you want to recall more about your past,
your childhood, then write it down. Talk about it. Talking today made me
remember this. And I’d never realized—it was my only memory of that day. The
only piece I kept. And I’ve always thought of it when I thought of her. But I’d
never realized how proud I was to have met her. To have her as a friend. That’s
what that feeling always was. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was a healthy dose of
accomplishment, a piece of my self-esteem that has always bolstered me.
So think on your past. Write it down. You may be surprised
on where it may lead.
