At one point during the conversation, Steve’s son-in-law came into the room where he was zooming and Steve introduced him to me. “Friends since the age of four,” Steve said, and I replied without thinking, “Set me up for life.” And Steve acknowledged that this assessment was true for him as well.
I do not know what Steve meant by the phrase, but for days now I have been pondering what I meant when I said that our childhood friendship set me up for life. I know it is true. I know I would not be alive today if it weren’t for those early years and first memories. I could not have survived the dark years of college and its suicidal depression, the grief of marriage and its loss of identity, the disintegration of my lesbian “marriage” and its destruction of my sense of trust in myself and others if I had not had the gifts of that first friendship to remember and draw on.
My mother understood how important this relationship was from the start. Standing in line in late August to register me for kindergarten, she heard the child in front of her turned away and the mother told to return “next year when the child is five.” The child had a birthday in October. I would not turn five until November 28. Instantly, my mother lied. “September 28,” she answered when asked for my birth date. Steve’s birthday was September 26. She was not about to let us be separated. I began school a year early.
So what were those gifts that my mother lied to protect.
Creativity. Together Steve and I made the most elaborate set ups, sometimes of our tin soldiers, sometimes of our tin animals, all of whom were carefully listed in our registry of purchases.. Around these set ups we would weave elaborate stories, create entire worlds. My mother treated our creations as sacred. No one was allowed to disturb them.
We learned at school and came home to turn our lessons into games. The Greeks and Romans may never have fought in history but in Steve’s backyard they faced off with garbage can lids for shields and sticks for swords. In these games, we were often joined by my brother, Dan, and Steve’s brother, Jim. I always wanted the Greeks to win but sometimes I had to give the victory to the Romans.
Agency. With creativity came a sense of agency. We were not passive recipients of information and experience. We were actors in our world, we made things happen, we could respond and do. Of course, sometimes this sense of agency took a toll on our animal companions. Needing a “horse” drawn “cart” for one of our outdoor creations, we tied Steve’s cocker spaniel to his red wagon and insisted that he pull it. Not surprisingly Tommy refused, but our sense of agency remained in place.
Centered. With agency came the sense of being at the center of things, not at the periphery. We made a world and I, just like Steve, was at its center. Marginalization – as a girl, a woman, a lesbian – was in my future but a childhood of being central kept me from ever fully accepting my secondary status.
Companioned. Most important of all the gifts, though perhaps the hardest to articulate, was the sense of being companioned. I had two wonderful parents and a beloved brother. But Steve was my companion, my peer, my friend. To begin life with a friend is an incalculable gift.
People talk about the value of being first among equals, but I proclaim the value of being equal among equals. There is you and there is the other, equal to you and without which you could not be yourself. You are in the center but another is right there with you in the center as well.
No matter how lonely I might be in later life, I had a memory, an image, a possibility of companionship that got me through. And a conviction that I was companionable. I had as well the experience of being centered while companioned, of knowing that one did not preclude the other.
With companionship came cooperation, and sometimes struggles, even fights. But also rapid reconciliation because what really mattered is not winning but sharing, hearing the doorbell on a Saturday morning calling you to come out and play.
I still have the tin soldiers and the tin animals; I still have postcards and notes. But what I treasure most is the engagement ring Steve gave me, after first consulting my mother as to color and composition and the appropriateness of the gift. It came, I am sure, from the local equivalent of a “Five and Ten” but it is precious to me. I remember my dad telling me that Steve’s ring was sweet but that I would need to know a lot of boys before I picked one to marry. I remember thinking, “Why should I have to travel all over the world meeting all the boys that exist, when I know who I will marry and he lives right here.” Of course, this was before I realized that I actually wanted to marry my girlfriend.
For years, I have regretted the move that ripped me from my Canadian home and from Steve. But lately I have begun to see the loss in a strange way as a gift. Moving when I did protected my relationship with Steve from the resorting of adolescence that might have broken both our hearts. Already, Steve had been getting grief from the other boys in our class because of his insistence on playing with me at recess and not them. Already my mother had told me that I could not go to the park to play hockey with Steve and Jim and Dan because “girls don’t play hockey.” Already different schools and different paths were being laid out for us. Moving when I did left me with the gifts intact.
And that is what has set me up for life.
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