She was my first friend. We met sometime in 1960 when my dad left New Ross Christian Church and accepted a position as the minister at Mt. Pleasant Christian Church in Greenwood, Indiana. We would have been 3 or 4 years old at the time. 

Kathy and Me

My first memories of Kathy are being in Sunday School together and sitting in the pew next to her in services that lasted way too long; our dads shared the dias. She tried to convince me that as Sunday School Superintendent, her dad was more important than mine. I stood up for the power of the pulpit. 

The pretty ladies at church, Pat, who looked like Audrey Hepburn, and Helen, who was just plain cool, favored Kathy. She got to spend the night with them and I was jealous of that. I was way too young to understand that they were stepping up for a little girl whose mother had tragically died at the age of 25, leaving a little 3-year-old girl behind. 

Kathy and I got into trouble for running in the sanctuary, hopped on gravestones in the cemetery, attended Summer Vacation Bible School together, and co-endured Revivals that featured a guest evangelist who had only two weeks to save our souls. Those were the times when my dad, not preaching, had the freedom to shake his head at me, demanding I cut out the whispering and giggling and behave. 

She won the Sunday School poetry contest. I was the butt of a cruel joke about my poem in front of the entire congregation. This has impaired my writing career. 

We had many play dates at each other’s houses. She had a full, pink kitchen set, the likes of which I’d never seen. Her suggestion was that we each select a Nancy Drew book from her bookshelf and lay on the floor and read together. I, the future high school English teacher, thought that would be a waste of our time because of the cool kitchen set. 

My family joined hers to watch the 1965 Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella because they had a color T.V. We did not. You see, her dad, along with his Sunday School Superintendent duties worked a real job at Indiana Bell that paid real money. My dad did not.

The Reunion and The Apology

Last weekend, Kathy, who now goes by Katie, and I sat next to each other, not in a pew, but in a banquet hall, her with a white wine, me a gin and tonic, and celebrated the fifty years since our high school graduation.

Knowing she would be in town for our reunion, I invited her to my house for brunch and an apology that I’ve owed her for many years. 

Back in middle school, when I became desperately intent on separating myself from my pitifully uncool family, I did something really mean to her. It was time to fess up about the incident that I lied about and denied. The incident that had surely been one of the leading traumas of her lifetime. 

Turns out, she remembered the meeting in my dad’s office as a time when we were both in trouble for something, but she couldn’t remember what it was all about. I assured her that it was me who was in trouble and that I was sorry for hurting her and sorry for lying about my sin. 

She accepted my apology with a laugh and generosity. I had been sure she knew why I had invited her over, and had been a little nervous about the conversation.

Katie assured me it was not that incident that rendered us classmates rather than true pals through the rest of middle and high school. It was more of a natural choosing of pathways by one girl who loved to read Nancy Drew books and one who was more drawn to banging pots and pans and playing make believe in a little, pink kitchen. 

She even fessed up to an incident where she was the naughty one. Something that happened when she stayed at my house for two weeks when one of her siblings was born. I had zero recollection of the incident or her even staying at our house for two weeks, and definitely no memory of her ever being the naughty one.

My assumption was that she had judged me a total loser when I smoked cigarettes and made out with older boys with sexy, long hair in the parking lot of our high school basketball games instead of joining the booster club. Turns out that wasn’t true. She was even gracious enough to label my screw-ups as “bold choices.”

The Table of Truth

We sat at my kitchen table (the table my family refers to as the table of truth) for four hours talking about real stuff. Shared experiences. The not always pretty truths of our youth. We enjoyed the gift of another’s perspective. As she put it, a chance to talk “with someone who shared rooms that no one else would know of, or remember.” It was intensive therapy, honest discourse, and reminiscing at its best. 

As I see it, we are two mature women who are brave enough to be truthful. Two women who are not afraid to get teary-eyed together. Two women who have made mistakes and been unkind to others. Two women who were raised in a time where children were seen and not heard, when most women were “housewives,” and the Midwest was wearing a wide, very tight, Bible Belt. Two women who have shared the experience of some very beautiful and some very ugly, antiquated rooms. Two women who have grown and are dedicated to making the world a better place. And two women who, I believe, will enjoy the gift of going forward as–once again–pals.