Summer Moves

Mrs. St. Louis’s grandchild Greta is moving with her family from one city to another. She’s a little worried about leaving her best friend. Making new friends will be easy for Greta because she’s a lovely child. She’s nine, but nine year olds worry about things like that. They have seen other kids struggling to get in with a new group and how tough it is because friendships have already taken root, and sometimes it seems there is no place for one more.

What she will experience is in time it will seem like everyone has been friends forever, but for now it looks cold and lonely.

What I want to tell Greta is that I remember when it all happened to me. Sometimes that’s helpful, and sometimes it’s not. I want to tell her I left my best friend when I was eleven. My family started moving every year or so until I got married. I want to tell her that there are some friends who will remain friends all your life no matter where you move.

My friend Cathy and I had grown up on the Island together. Moving away was really hard for me because I didn’t make new friends in the new place. There were a few boys in my new neighborhood, but not a single girl, so I was by myself a lot, and I was lonely.

Greta’s parents have been careful to choose a new place to live where there are lots of other children – both boys and girls. My parents never liked children so they always lived in exclusive neighborhoods where there were few of us. I remember thinking a lot about my friendship with Cathy and missing it. I learned to write letters. Phoning was not something we did very often in those days

Over the years, we moved again and again across the country, but it didn’t stop the friendship. I wrote to Cathy all the time, and she responded as well. Years went by and she came to visit when we were both fifteen. It was a wonderful month.

The years passed again and the letters came and went. Occasionally we would call at Christmas, but the feeling of the friendship always continued as if we still lived down the street from one another.

Cathy was my maid of honor when I got married. She spent a summer with me in New York. Then I visited her home in California back in 1974. After that we were busy rearing children. We didn’t see each other for nearly twenty years.

Cathy visited me in 2003. We’ve been friends for fifty years, and when we call or see one another it is as if we still lived down the street. And that’s the way children’s friendships start, continue and should be. A friendship, after all, is what a child makes it. It’s important from the beginning and should be something that parents encourage and treasure as much as the child because it is something that a child will have for the rest of his or her life even after the parent is gone.

A friendship is a child’s first real choice. It’s based on personality and taste. I like this person because… and there might be a because and there might not. Most friendships will come and go, but for those special ones, parents should take heed about just how important they are and how they will last with only a little encouragement.

I treasure my friendship with Cathy because our first little girl memories help make us what we are. They are part of our formation.

It doesn’t take a great deal of work to keep a child’s friendship alive. It takes a weekend once in a while, a phone call and help with mailing letters. With Internet, it’s almost do it yourself.