The Friends We Keep

Lisa B. is my childhood friend I’ve known all my life since I was a toddler, even before I could remember knowing we were friends. Our dads met first. Her father, Arnie, was a pharmacist; my dad, Freddy, was a pharmaceutical salesman. My father traveled throughout New Jersey on a regular route, stopping in to see his drugstore customers, and taking their orders for drug inventories. My dad introduced Arnie, and his wife, Johanna, to my mother, Marilyn. My mom and Johanna became best friends.

Mom was pregnant with me first, and then Johanna followed with her first daughter, Lisa, shortly thereafter. It was only natural that Lisa and I would meet and become playmates as babies. Our mothers plopped us in a playpen, and then took turns babysitting, while the other went grocery shopping or ran errands.

Our families were always together in some fashion – spending time at each other’s houses for playtime during the day, or dinners at night, or weekend activities. When my brother, David, was born a few years later, Johanna had a second daughter, Nancy. David and Nancy were a “cute couple” of babies holding hands.

We spent summers at the Livingston town pool. We took vacations together to Wildwood Crest at the southern-most tip of the New Jersey shoreline, where we’d swim, go to the beach, collect hermit crabs, and play on the sand dunes. We had sleepovers, and picnics, and backyard barbeques on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. We spend those holidays together as extended families – we called each other’s parents “Aunt” and “Uncle.”

Lisa and I were a year apart in school, and my brother and Nancy were in the same grade. We celebrated birthdays together. As children we were close as siblings.

Lisa and I started to drift apart as we got to high school. We had separate friends, and interests. But since our parents stayed friends, we always maintained a friendship, even though we didn’t see each other too often. Our mothers continued to meet regularly for lunch to catch up, our dads met to stroll around the exercise path, and all four of our parents got together for dinners just to visit or go on vacations together.

There was a gap in our friendship when we went away to college. I knew Lisa went to nursing school, but I did not see her for years. She was living in New York City, and I was living in New Jersey while commuting into the city for my job.

When my father died, Lisa’s whole family was a support to my mother, my brother and me, and mourned my father as a family member.

Lisa had gotten married, and was living in an apartment in New York. She found a kitten on her balcony and kept it. She called it Timi, since it was a timid little kitten. But when she got pregnant with her first child, she developed asthma, and gave the kitten to her parents. The grown cat lived with Johanna and Arnie in their house in Livingston. After a few years, they decided to sell their house and move to a town house, but wouldn’t be able to move in immediately. They would be moving to an apartment temporarily, but the apartment didn’t allow pets. Johanna knew Mom and I loved cats, since we’d already had a cat called Cindy, who passed away when I was in high school, and Mom had always had cats as a girl. Now Johanna asked Mom and me if we’d watch the Timi the cat for a while. We said sure. Johanna would pet sit for us when we’d go out of town, and she’d update Lisa on how her cat was doing. We watched that cat for ten years until she died at age 17.

Lisa and I had a bond as friends that was solid and we had not forgotten our childhood memories or connections.

When my mother died after a long returning battle with cancer, Lisa and her sister Nancy, and their parents Johanna and Arnie came to the funeral. There was a huge hole in our friendship circle that we’d all maintained our entire lives.

Nancy invited me to her house for Mother’s Day the month after my Mom died – that first awkward and painful Mother’s Day without my mother. It was right before I moved to California. That was six years ago, and the last time I saw any of them.

Johanna had developed Parkinson’s Disease, and over the years, her health declined. She and Arnie moved into an assisted living community near Nancy. Johanna died a couple of years ago, and both girls reached out to tell me the news. I hoped our mothers were having lunch together up there, reminiscing about the times we shared when we all were young. I called Arnie to tell him how sad I was, and how I missed his wife, my aunt who wasn’t my real aunt.

Those early friendships were special. I never had friends later on like the ones I had when I was small.