Clever Escape

Sunshine met a girl her age at swimming lessons. Three, actually. One of whom had also been in her soccer camp, but they didn’t realize it until four days in. Kids are ridiculous sometimes. There were only four girls in the class! How do you not notice that one of them is a girl that you had played with every day the week before?

Silly.

The new girl’s name is Izzy. She is a little pixie girl, with a tiny face and pointed nose and chin, and curly hair that I am pretty sure her mother doesn’t know what to do with. On day three of swimming lessons, Izzy asked Sunshine if she would be her best friend.

I know, at eight, you have dozens of “best friends”. And if you are Sunshine, you have them all over the country. But this one is significant because on the drive to swimming lessons that day, Sunshine had been lamenting her lack of friends in Phoenix and wishing she could meet someone she could play with while she was here.

We talked about her moving around so much (her mother moves regularly, all over her state) and how she makes friends everywhere she lives and not to worry, that she will find some friends here. And we talked about life a little bit, how as we get older our likes and needs change, and sometimes friends will still fit as we get older, but most of the time new friends will come along. I told her about all the different friends I have had all over the place, and that each of them were special to me in some way.

She asked questions about some of my friends and my moving around and seemed to be starting to understand that change is a part of life, and while it may be hard, it can be good too.

In the past she has had several friends here, but in her long breaks between trips down here, we lose track of them. Moving back to NY for that year didn’t help, either.

When we got out to the car she promptly informed me that, “Hey, clevergirl, do you remember what we were talking about before? About friends? Well Izzy just asked me to be her best friend. Isn’t that cool that I was just wanting one here, and now I have one?”

I could tell she was happy, but afraid to be excited about it. She has lost so much, so often. There are very few constants in her life. I hope this friend will last.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 8:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.