Ann

Today is Ann’s birthday. We have been friends since we met in kindergarten at 3 years old – almost 50 years ago! She was my first friend, and has remained a dear and treasured sister through the years.

Ann and I played our way through childhood – climbing trees, exploring gullies, gorging on the mangoes, tamarinds and plums that bore profusely in our yards, rearing puppies, riding horses. My memories are of being outside all the time – I cannot conjure a memory of Ann inside a house. Her free spirit, the bane of her mother, soared, and I and my sister soared with her. There are few childhood memories without Ann. We attended the same school and lived in the same neighbourhood. It was total, unbounded joy when Ann came to live two doors from us. Then, life became an endless spell of being at one or the other’s homes or somewhere in between.

Our paths diverged in our teens – she started motherhood early, while I took the academic path. Years passed – many when we did not see each other at all. Our mothers became fast friends, and we were kept current on each other’s lives through them. “I saw Auntie Mo today and she told me that Ann …” my mother would say, and that was enough to make me know that all was well with her. Yet all of this matters not. For when Ann and I meet, rarely as human time goes, we are immediately ensconced in our cocoon of friendship. It is the same love and acceptance of each other as came forth when we connected in kindergarten as three year olds. There is total acceptance of each other. We accept the busy-ness of each other’s lives, the different paths we each have taken. We also accept how much we love each other, our differences, our similarities, our uniqueness.

At my mother’s 90th birthday celebration when she acknowledged Enid, her friend of almost 80 years, I whispered to Ann “That’s us!” I know that we are forever friends, always an integral part of each other’s lives, and of who we are today.

Would that all our relationships are like this – unconditional love and acceptance, no demands, no recriminations, joy on meeting, joy in memories and gratitude for having each other in our lives! Free and laughing friendship!