Mud Pies and Snickerdoodles

As we get older I think we sometimes forget where we came from. We forget the things that were so important in forming who we are and what we believe. The things we experienced during our childhood years mean more then we could ever really know. The people that knew us back when are the ones who know us well for better and worse.

The other day I saw some childhood friends and one of them said something that got me thinking. She said that she didn't want to get mushy or anything but that she wanted me to know how much we (my family) meant to her..how important we all were in her childhood. She is so right and it went both ways.

The day the two sisters moved into the red barn house across the street from my house my sister and I were so excited. We saw the moving truck unloading a pink bike with training wheels and we knew that there were little girls moving in. From that moment on we made memory after memory together. We spent the summers joined at the hip. The moment we woke up we would meet in my backyard. The grass was still wet with dew and the sun was hardly up. We would make mud pies and hang out in the club house in the mulberry tree. We would hardly stop to have lunch and be back out there playing. No TVs or computers just good old fashioned fun. When school time would come back around we would peel away from each other but always end up back together in the afternoons and on weekends. We played barbies for years and so much more. I think they saw in us a stable family with a mom and a dad. Someone was always home after school and there was always a plate of fresh baked cookies. I think we saw in them the mystery of a single parent household. Their mom worked full time and they spent time alone. We envied that. We saw their dad show up every other Friday in his little sporty car and shuttle them to his house with a pool miles away. It was almost like a soap opera to us. One we couldn't' stop watching.

As we got older things got more complicated as they always do. We had different interests and different friends. The summers got clogged with boyfriends and jobs and the closeness wavered. An uncomfortable smile or a nod would be all we could muster for each other. By then their mom moved from the red barn house. We all went off to college and found our groove. We married and had babies and carved out lives. We have found each other again. A little older and wiser. We all have kids the age that we were when we met across that street all those years ago. Seeing our kids running around playing together brought back the things all those memories and that unstoppable connection. The connection made of mud pies and Snickerdoodles.