When I was very young I remember playing with a little boy in the neighborhood. He's a shadowy memory, but like most childhood memories there are a few flashes that are clear, and I can glimpse his face when the moment hits me right. What I remember the most was that he was a nice friend. He was fun and gentle and never said anything unkind and never made me feel bad.
We spent hours playing in the cool sand in the shed in his back yard, while the Texas sun blazed like a furnace outside. We played store and put our items for sale on the wooden planks of the shed. We pretended we had a restaurant and cooked our sand food. We giggled and imagined, and never ran out of ideas of what to play.
When I started first grade, he wasn't there to start school with me. I don't remember asking where he was but I do know I never received a satisfactory answer. I lived in Smalltown, Texas, and all the children in the area went to one small school. Where was he?
After four decades, I began to wonder if he had even been real. Maybe he had been an imaginary friend? No one else ever mentioned him.
I brought up the subject to my mother. Did she remember a boy I used to play with when I was very little? "He lived nearby," I said, "we used to play before I started school." Did she remember any one like that?
She said she remembered very clearly. She said she remembers his mother driving him by our house to the hospital so often. He had leukemia, and he died before he turned six, so that's why he never started school. She said he was a kind and gentle child; his mother adored him, and she said that he loved when I came over to play with him. It was such a tragedy that they never told me about it.
It's funny how a little kid can know that things are not right, even when nobody will tell her anything. It is amazing how the mind doesn't let go of something when it doesn't add up, or when it's unresolved.
I hope I was a good friend for him during his brief life. I wish I knew how to reach his mother because I would love to write her a letter telling her that even through all these years, her son is remembered with much fondness by his friend.
We spent hours playing in the cool sand in the shed in his back yard, while the Texas sun blazed like a furnace outside. We played store and put our items for sale on the wooden planks of the shed. We pretended we had a restaurant and cooked our sand food. We giggled and imagined, and never ran out of ideas of what to play.
When I started first grade, he wasn't there to start school with me. I don't remember asking where he was but I do know I never received a satisfactory answer. I lived in Smalltown, Texas, and all the children in the area went to one small school. Where was he?
After four decades, I began to wonder if he had even been real. Maybe he had been an imaginary friend? No one else ever mentioned him.
I brought up the subject to my mother. Did she remember a boy I used to play with when I was very little? "He lived nearby," I said, "we used to play before I started school." Did she remember any one like that?
She said she remembered very clearly. She said she remembers his mother driving him by our house to the hospital so often. He had leukemia, and he died before he turned six, so that's why he never started school. She said he was a kind and gentle child; his mother adored him, and she said that he loved when I came over to play with him. It was such a tragedy that they never told me about it.
It's funny how a little kid can know that things are not right, even when nobody will tell her anything. It is amazing how the mind doesn't let go of something when it doesn't add up, or when it's unresolved.
I hope I was a good friend for him during his brief life. I wish I knew how to reach his mother because I would love to write her a letter telling her that even through all these years, her son is remembered with much fondness by his friend.
