I Love a Story

    You can find one in the delightful antics of a toddler, on a walk in the quiet coolness of a foggy morning, or in the middle of a riotous celebration of friends taking a road trip. There is a story to be found in most every day.

   Not all stories start out to be that; sometimes they just happen, especially when you aren't looking. Then as you look back over a life lived, the high spots start to rise and soon the whole thing has taken on a personality of it's own...a story has been born.
  Today there is a special story I would like to highlight, it's one of those kind that slip up on you when you're not looking. 
   Think back in time with me and enjoy this one. You will probably finish with one very similar in your own mind.  Enjoy...
   Some sixty-odd years ago, while I was still too young to know that stories actually happen to people, while I still thought they were just the "once-upon-a-time" ones that moms everywhere read at bedtime, this story began.
   I was an only girl in an all boy family and had no friends of my own, until one day I remember being at my aunt's house and realizing the somewhat younger girl there was my cousin.  
   I don't remember really meeting her, she was just always there...we were always together.  The younger years of paper dolls, skinned knees, eating Popsicles in the back yard, staying at each other's house, playing in the sprinkler... just always was.
   Then one day I remember their family moved into the house next door to ours, that's where our story really started.  By this time we were around eight, I think.
   There was only a shrub fence between our front yards, and her bedroom window was right across the driveway from mine.  We knew there was a "lights out" but the consequences were not strong enough to remove the temptation to talk through the window. This was before air-conditioning and our windows were always open. It was as if when the lights went out, our day continued.
   The nights, just before we had to be inside, were shared lying on our backs looking at the stars and talking about what might be out there, in the darkest of dark (science was only for school).
   Right after school was a time for playing, cutting limbs off trees, riding bikes and arm wrestling the guys down the street. (and always beating them)...hmmm, maybe that's why we both married guys not from the neighborhood. Although those guys were our protectors, companions and confidants when we needed one, as well as "dates to all things school related." To Jr. high dances, dance parties at her house, etc.
   You've heard the saying "girl fight", well we were the best, we could have majored in that subject and have a thriving business teaching girls today.  Right there between my driveway and her shrub hedge, we would kick, bite, pull hair, scratch skin off with nails, bend arms back 'til the other cried, "Give"; and on and on. When we were both too tired to even remember what the fight was about, we sat down to plan who would spend the night at whose house.
   Then as we got older, and started high school, (I mean she was just a little kid then, she couldn't drive a car, or anything REAL teenagers could do), we developed our own set of friends and life started to happen.  I got married, had a baby and moved away, then she got married and started having babies, too.  The only times we were together were Christmases when the family Christmas Eve get-together came around.  We could still pick up the phone and start our last conversation where it left off though.
   Fast forward some thirty-ish years (I guess, time doesn't transfer in my stories, as relationships do). 
   Now enter the Diva years.  She and I, along with the friend I met in first grade, got together and became THE DIVA'S, before you could even find bling that says "Diva."  We have traveled, talked, shopped, ate, talked, cried, talked and have formed a golden chain not easily broken by life.  
   Since I have nothing to give as a tribute to my BFF, COUSIN, and DIVA SISTER, you get to be the feature of my story. Have a beautiful Sunday afternoon and, I love you DS.