"It's Craig!" resounded the cries of half a dozen little boys and one girl. They thronged about the Fairwood entrance sign as Craig and I returned from work last week, jumping up and down with excitement. They had a story that couldn't wait to be told!
"Guess what?" one of the lads cried, I think it might have been Ian. "Peter was in the middle of the road and a man drove up and opened his door and said, 'Get out of the road!'" He said this as if it were the funniest news in the world.
"Yeah, he said, 'Get out of the road!'" Peter echoed, grinning from ear to ear.
"Do your parents know that you're playing in the road?" Craig asked the recent five-year-old, including everyone else in his address.
"Uhuh," nine-year-old Michael replied. "We're playing with this tire and that tire," he added, pointing at tires that seemed to have a transparent quality to our ignorant eyes.
Hmm. Sound logical.
"Okay, well I need to go now," Craig said, after telling Stephen and Davie to stop trying to open the his car door (he locked it just to be safe). "Move back from the car, please!"
"Hey, why did you go backwards?" Lydia called out after us, after Craig started his car on a hill.
"It's called driving standard," Craig replied quietly to me since Lydia wouldn't have heard or understood anyway.
It wasn't long before this experience got me thinking about the exciting things that I did with my passel of friends when I was their age. My passel may not have been as large, but we certainly managed to have great times. From building a teepee with the Adams boys to playing orphanage in the sleeping attic during the Feast to constructing a "house" behind the cottage, we built memories that have long outlasted our flimsy hovels.
Who was in my passel of friends, you might ask? Well, mostly it was Jayna, Laura, Jared, and me, with an occasional visitor like Marie or Debbie or Cara thrown in there somewhere. Jayna was older than I by two years, and then came Laura, then me, and finally Jared who was two years younger than I. With Laura being in the middle and the most sanguine (or the most "fun" in this case), Jayna and I fought over Laura almost constantly, or so it seemed. We always wanted to be the one to sit next to Laura, or to sleep next to her during the occasional sleepover, so we finally figured out that the only way to make everybody happy was to invariably put Laura in the middle. I can still see this reflected even today by looking at the picture I drew of the three of us when I was five during Ernestine's art class. There's Laura, smack dab in the middle right where she belonged in order to make the world a better place because it would be lacking two extra grumpy girls.
Laura was the sparkle and the peacemaker. Things just weren't quite fun if she wasn't around, and Jayna and I often couldn't get along with each other without her. Why we had this conflict between ourselves, I couldn't say. Clyde frequently claimed that Jayna was a brat, but I think that's a little unfair because he was more than a little biased towards me, and I know that I was never an angel, although my temperament has always been pretty phlegmatic.
I still remember one time when Jayna stomped off and refused to talk to me. She retreated to the cement ledge right next to the sharp corner in between the Main House and the Dining Hall and perched there sulking. I imagine I must have been being annoying, but all I can remember is feeling hurt and a little afraid of her. Laura, our middleman as always, followed her and asked her what was wrong. Jayna replied in an almost cheerful voice, "I don't want to play with Kayla!" It wasn't long before I was running off to snatch my mother from staff meeting so I could have a good cry and receive a little comfort. Shortly after that, Julie, Jayna's mom and my cousin, came by and told Jayna that it was time to go home and Laura and I had to leave. "Tattletale," Jayne muttered darkly at me. "What are you talking about?" Julie asked. "Kayla didn't tell me anything." I felt like crowing. I hadn't said a thing, and Jayna had given herself away! The hurt was almost worth it for that one golden triumph.
To be fair, Jayna and I didn't always dislike each other. In fact, somewhere in there Jayna seemed to change drastically and I remember her telling me very sincerely that she knew she hadn't always been nice to me but she really liked me. I was reconciled with her at once from that point on, and even though I doubt we completely lacked squabbles, we remained great friends. After all, who can't help but liking someone who gives you a Belle doll?
I mentioned that there was a fourth person in our pack: Jared. Why haven't I said more about him? Because he is the one I want to talk the most about. Although in my young brain I qualified Cara and Laura as my best friends (chums like Klara, Meredith, and Steph didn't really enter the picture for me until I was about seven--this is the five to six era), Jared was my best buddy. For some inexplicable reason, Jared practically worshiped the ground I walked upon. Perhaps it was because I was the closest person to his age who actually chose to play with him, I couldn't say. After awhile, I grew tired of his repeated invitations to "pway," as he called it. No, my brain wanted to be fried by mindless entertainment, so Jared finally figured out that sometimes the best way to lure me down to his house was to invite me to watch a movie. Then, when the movie was part way through, he would spring his request on me hoping I would give in and play. He might have succeeded once or twice, but my corrupt little mind was too thirsty for entertainment. After all, I was allowed to watch movies at his house that were all but forbidden in my own. Movies like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin weren't encouraged in our house because of the immodest female characters in them, but my parents didn't seem to have a problem with my imbibing these films in other homes.
However, I did still "pway" with Jared now and then, and also enjoyed it. Sure, Jared often did follow me around until I grew so irritated I would hide from him, but most of the time I was more than happy to play. Unfortunately, my least angelic side also took some advantage of his devotion to me. One time I remember I wanted to play with a certain toy that Jared wouldn't let me play with. Infuriated, I stood up and declared that I was going home. "Noooo!" Jared whimpered, relinquishing the toy. This might have happened on several occasions for all I remember, but I specifically recall one time when I was not appeased by his pleadings for me to stay. So I stormed off down the hall to the cottage's side door and stood there before going out, fuming. Jared followed quietly, and approaching me with his brown eyes large and mournful, he said, "Kaya, I wuv you." I still remember almost every detail of his expression and his tone of voice, and every time my heart melts at the very memory of it. If I'm right, I think my heart melted the first time too, and I relented and couldn't stay angry at him anymore.
As you might have gathered, at three and four Jared had a few pronunciation difficulties which wasn't too surprising due to his age. Because of this, we three girls were all termed "Jaya," "Wawa," and "Kaya." After awhile our titles were advanced to "JayNA," "Wara," and "Kaywa." I remember one time his manner of speech proved quite an amusement for Cara and Ryan, who one time when they were over kept plaguing Jared by asking him how old he was. "Fwee," he responded, and they would laugh and say, "You're free?" "No, FWEE!" Jared would exclaim. I think I felt bad for him at the time, but I wasn't really sure what to do about it.
Jared had other likes besides friends like me. For one thing, he loved killer whales, and had quite a few of them in his toy collection. Other joys for him were his thirst for "moke" (aka "milk"), "pop" (the term makes sense now that I remember that their family has some roots in Michigan), and an intense liking for mustard sandwiches. I never could and probably never will understand this strange attraction between him and those oozing yellow treats. My complete inability to understand this is probably a result of my never ever having liked mustard one whit. But it was Jared, and I loved him despite his oddities, even when I was a little grossed out when he would pull out the milk or pop from the fridge and start drinking straight from the bottle.
One of my favorite memories of Jared is when he and I delivered May baskets together. I think actually that it was after his family had moved away, but he had returned to visit with his mom for a late birthday celebration for my grandmother. Anyway, I had heard of the practice of May baskets and had taken a fancy to trying out the tradition. So my mom baked a bunch of chocolate chip cookies and Craig made up some green and yellow paper baskets to put them in, and Jared and I set off on our secret mission. In order to be sneaky, we decided to cut across the ball field to gain access to the apartment buildings (I think the Passes were living there at the time). On our way, we came across several piles of deer manure. At least, since I was walking ahead I was the one who came across them, and every time I did I would turn to warn Jared. And invariably, every time I did this, Jared would stop dead in his tracks, and while still carefully clutching his load of May baskets, he would slowly tilt both his ankles outward simultaneously, going bowlegged in order to examine the undersides of his shoes. The picture was so repeatedly comical that I can hardly keep myself from smiling every time I think of it.
Other highlights with Jared, Jayna, and Laura included the time we built a "house" and had Sabbath meeting in it with Jayna and Jared's parents (I still remember Jared praying and thanking God that it was his birthday tomorrow). Another time was when we played on Jayna and Jared's roof. Jayna and Laura were even brave enough to stand on the dormers (I think that's what they're called) and dance as they made up some cool song about being on top of the mountain. I remember admiring them for their bravery and improvisational skills, and pretty much every other "cool" thing about them. I even remember thinking that everybody liked Jayna and Laura better that me because they were skinny and I was fat (this is almost laughable because although I might not have been quite as bony as they were at that age, I was never very close to obtaining the feature of obesity).
Anyway, sometimes I wonder if our parents always knew that we were playing on a roof. At least I was always under the impression that Jim and Julie knew what we were doing and were okay with it so I don't think I was purposefully being naughty. The greatest time we had on the roof was shortly before Jayna and Jared moved. There was some sort of going away party for them that day, and we were playing on the roof when Marie and James (church friends who were my and Jared's ages, respectively) came along looking for us, so we all hid up there and made ghost sounds. After all, Marie had always believed in Santa Claus, so we figured that she was superstitious enough to believe in ghosts, right? And Marie and James even acted like they were a little scared, but when we told them later, Marie said that she had known all along what we were doing. As for whether that was really true, I guess we'll never know.
I've mentioned a few highlights of our times together, but there was one that sticks out far above the rest. What type of event could have embedded itself so firmly in my childish memory? Why, an unbirthday party of course! Although the idea first tendrilled out from the movie Alice in Wonderland, I first heard of its arrival at Fairwood up on the ball field during a youth convention. We were hanging around near the snack bar lines (a commonly haunted spot at that age since almost our only involvement in the ways of the ancient youth was in joining them in the snack bar line) when Jayna announced to me that THEY were having an unbirthday party at her house. Although she might not have said so in so many words, the strong implication was that I wasn't invited. Then Julie bent over and motioned Jayna to her for a brief whispering session. Immediately afterwards, Jayna, in a more subdued tone, politely asked me if I would like to come to the unbirthday party as well. Elated, I accepted.
What is involved in an unbirthday party, you might ask? I'm not sure, but our party was the best unbirthday party I'd ever been to. We sang the Alice in Wonderland song (Jared, not quite sure of all the words, loudly echoed the words "to you, to you, to you, to you!"), opened presents (I still have the jingly pearly white bracelet Julie gave me), and blew out candles on a bunt cake. This part was probably the trickiest because we all were supposed to blow out the candles at the same time, but whenever we counted to three Jared kept on blowing them out ahead of time, so we had to relight the candles and start all over again. Finally, the crowning event after blowing out the candles was eating the cake. And since this was an unconventional kids only (plus Julie) party, we got to do what I have never done since then--eat the cake straight off the pan with our bare hands! Ah yes, although I was a little timid at first to be so completely devoid of the normal rules of manners and cleanliness, I dug in with gusto right along side of Laura and Jared, stuffing the cake into our mouths as fast as we could so we could grab more before it was all gone. Jayna only was the one who had a fit at this part (in retrospect I can't say I blame her), so she ate her cake on a separate plate. While we were doing the cake full justice in our delightfully barbaric manner, who should walk into the room but Darla! If you're wondering who Darla is, I can't really say because I was never really sure myself. My impressions at that young age were that she was about Julie's age and friends with her, had curly hair and might have always worn lipstick, and she smoked. I knew this because the lodge room she stayed in stank to high heaven of cigarette smoke even after she left Fairwood. Well, she had always been friendly with us little kids so we all liked her in a way (especially Jayna), but I think she was more than a little taken aback to walk into the room and see us ragamuffins clawing at our food as fast as we could. Laura especially got a kick out of the slight shock registered on Darla's face, and it was she who actually pointed it out to us . . . I probably wouldn't have noticed, though I almost stopped eating when I saw her. But Laura didn't care, if anything she dug into the cake with even more zest just for the joy of showing Darla that manners didn't matter at OUR party! And that was probably the crowning event of my childhood with those three friends.
It is strange to me how four children can be so close at a certain era of their lives, yet choose so completely different paths that they end up branching out to different parts of the forest. Jared is turning sixteen this month and I barely know him now, as much as I would like to. However, even though I know that now we all don't agree on many issues, I sense a bond that links me to those three, even if I do nothing but notice it and even if they never notice it at all. But whatever happens, I think there will still be a special place in my heart with the names Jayna, Laura, and Jared written there.
