My First Friend

This week I made shortbread cookies, the thick rectangular kind that melt in your mouth and are perfect with a cup of tea. Like Ted Lasso. Baking cookies made me think about Karla, my very first friend. Most of my childhood memories have Karla somewhere in them so I always think of her when I am reminiscing.

One time in high school, we invited our mothers to teatime (at my mom’s house). We baked and cooked a thousand things from the Anne of Green Gables recipe book which Karla had given to me. We made ourselves sick from eating probably a pound of butter each while “sampling” our thumbprint shortbread cookies. Karla gave me that book because I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables, and we thought of each other like Anne and Diana. Karla was sensible and kind. She was faithful and steady, just like Diana. I was a wild dreamer, a moody poet with big emotions, like Anne. She helped keep me grounded. I helped her use her imagination.

We helped each other in other ways too. I helped Karla pass gym class by saying that I definitely saw her do a tripod headstand for more than 5 seconds. She helped me pass home economics by perfectly hiding the final stitches on my sewing project, a capital T-for-Thompson shaped pillow. I had to pull my stitches out several times because they were so bad.

Karla and I became friends in kindergarten, and I loved to sit by her. I was a very shy kid. Karla was not. When I got called on, she would answer the teacher’s questions for me. She would raise her hand and tell the teacher when I needed something. At least until she got shushed which happened most days. Then she’d cover her mouth with her little hands like she was sorry, but I could hear her quiet giggles behind them. She was clever and tricky and funny.

In first grade, Karla got placed in the advanced reading group, and I did not. I was very sad and wasn’t sure how I could succeed in school without her to do my talking for me. Before too long a kind teacher realized that shyness may be my issue with reading, not aptitude. I caught up, and we were in the same class again. Karla’s a teacher now and told me that kids these days sometimes are diagnosed with something called selective mutism. “I think you had that,” she told me, “and I wish teachers knew so they could have helped you.”

We spent our elementary school days riding bikes everywhere in town, making forts in the haymow at her family farm, and mewing like baby kittens so we could discover their hiding places and snuggle them. We rode in the bed of her dad’s truck with the dog and learned to drive the tractor to pick up the bale feeder wagon from the pasture (a chore we were never again asked to repeat because we didn’t take it seriously enough).

In junior high, Karla developed a crush on my 16-year-old brother, as did all my other friends. It was disgusting in the way that only 13-year-old girls with a crush on a total asshole can be disgusting. They giggled when he teased them instead of punching him, which was the right way to handle it.

We were really different from each other, but our friendship just worked. We learned and grew together. We helped and comforted each other through our tumultuous teenage years.

And then we went off to college at different universities. We started out writing each other letters, but I left many of her letters unanswered which hurt her. In my defense, I was really busy learning important things…about women. Because of that, it was hard to talk to my high school friends. I was discovering the real me, and I was scared of how they would react. We grew up at a time when everyone, including myself, made fun of gay people. If you didn’t, you would be labelled a gay person which was just about the worst thing to be in high school. Part of me believes that I would have lost all my friends if I came out then. But I think the actual truth is that I couldn’t take the risk that other people would love my authentic self until I learned to love me first.

As a result, Karla and I went on our own separate paths for the first time since we were five years old. My path took me down some scary roads. Because people don’t reach adulthood unscathed, I’m confident her path was scary at times too. I have some guilt that I wasn’t there to help her through it.

Not loving our authentic selves has real, negative consequences on our relationships. We hide ourselves and push people away from us, lest they discover who we really are. This isn’t just true of queer people. This is true of everyone. Shame creates distance. Distance creates divides. Divides destroy connection.

I eventually learned to explore and love my authentic self, though it took several decades. When I did, I also learned that Karla hadn’t stopped caring about me. And when I came out, she so quickly loved me for who I was that it was as if she knew all along. She probably did.

This year is our 30th high school reunion, and I’m not sure if I’ll make it home. I’m separated by actual physical distance now. But this week when I sat down to eat my shortbread cookies on a pretty opalescent plate with a mug of tea, I wished that Karla and I lived closer. She would watch Ted Lasso with me again, even though Kim thinks it’s too soon.