I can't remember now whether it was sixth grade or seventh, when I first met the boy who was a year ahead of me, who used to pester me in the band building. I remember thinking how annoying he was, how he approached the level of arch-nemesis. But there must not have been anything truly cruel about that teasing, because I never did anything about it, and so many years later, I can't remember a single taunt. What I do remember is the surprise I felt four or five years later, when his sister joined me in the flute section in band, and we totally hit it off. We got so close that I considered her to be pivotal in my innermost circle of friends, and I found myself spending long hours at the house of my old nemesis, finding out that he was a real person and a pretty amusing one at that. I felt like the whole family had accepted me as another one of the kids. The only one who never warmed up to me was their cat, who liked me the night we met, and tried to kill me every other time I came back. (I did egg her on, singing the Talking Heads song Psycho Killer every time she howled at me and tried to draw blood.)
There were times I was so close to the little sister, I felt like I could read her mind. Like the day I got sent off to another town to compete in an interscholastic meet (not in something where I knew I could kick ass like English, but where I was only marginally competitive like typing--not my best showing). I was riding home on the school bus, when I was overcome with emotion. I was inexplicably angry, and just a little freaked out and scared, and it was all directed at my friends' dad. When I got home, I immediately called the little sister, and asked her if something had happened during that time. She told me she had gone into her room to draw, and her dad had come in and started yelling at her for something he thought she should have been doing instead. She said the argument came out of nowhere and escalated quickly, and she felt the things I had described, at the time I was feeling them too on the bus. I thought the whole experience was a little spooky. But as close as we were, something drove us apart when I went away to college. We didn't communicate for over a year, and I remember the great sense of relief I had when we finally made up and started talking again. We never were as close as high school again, but thanks to Facebook, I got to reconnect with the whole family. I love the Internet. (Incidentally, it was at their house that I caught my very first whiff of computer communication, when they had a strange cradle for the handset of their telephone, and a way to use the signal of the dial tone to circumvent long-distance charges and type as long as they wanted to somebody on the other end of that connection. I was so fascinated, but I never thought that sort of thing would ever catch on for everybody to do. It was just for those tech freaks, you know.)
Several weeks ago, I found out the dad in that family was sick. He had the same kind of leukemia that has touched older members of my family twice, but apparently his condition was more advanced when it was discovered, or perhaps it was just more aggressive. I found out this evening that after a short but very intense battle with the lymphoma that can come as a progression of this illness, he passed away. My heart aches for the family that accepted me so readily, who kept me as one of their own ever since. I love them all, and I hope they know how much.
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