Remembering Allie is fun.

I met Allison just before her fifth birthday. She was everything I wasn’t: confident, bold, comfortable taking up space and using her voice – that delightfully surprising froggy voice – and having fun. We were in Ms. Moise’s kindergarten class, and I was teary and desperate, missing my parents and feeling adrift amongst a classroom of kids who saw the loud, chaotic, colorful landscape of tiny plastic chairs and dull baby scissors as an adventure. I was terrified. Allison ran headfirst into the party. Her courage was magnetic, and when somewhere in that sea of kindergarteners she found me and held on, I felt saved.

And so it was that we became counterbalancing forces in each other’s lives. First best friends. She had silky blonde hair, mine was long and dark. She liked pink and purple and was into horses, and I wanted to dig worms and hunt for rocks. She had the softest, smoothest little hands, while I was all pointy angles. She said it all out loud, and I wanted to plan, pause and draft. I had to push myself to keep up with her fearless physicality, her impish, knowing teasing and sparkling energy on the playground.

One day when Valerie was out back gardening, Alli cut her own bangs into these chunky, uneven jags. I was in awe. This was the kind of chutzpah that I wanted to be close to. What fun to be in this orbit.

Hers was the kind of friendship that felt like family. We fought like sisters. Our parents had to put limits on our sleepovers because too much time together would devolve into little girl bickering and limit pushing and loving scraps. And in a time when both of our families were juggling working and schlepping and school drop-offs and daycare pick-ups, we all became fused, as part of a tiny community of helpers and surrogate moms, dads, sisters, and brothers.

I got Valerie, Scott, Deb, Ben, and Elliot.

I remember dinners in Valerie’s newly redone yard, climbing up the hill to sit outside on warm nights. Its-It ice cream sandwiches at the table, the novelty of a big brother’s big toothbrush in the bathroom. Afternoons swimming at the JCC, where Scott coached our basketball team. So many wavy-blue chlorine memories of handstands and races and tests to see who could hold their breath longer under water – always a competition. The glowing candlelight on our faces as we sang the Shabbat blessings, or laughing in Deb’s kitchen while we shredded potatoes for latkes. My dad took us to Gallinas to play tetherball on weekends, and my mom helped us pick out songs from her Broadway sheet music to sing in the talent show.

Allison was wise. She was intuitive. She sensed when I needed her, when I was feeling lonely or unsure, and she knew what would make me laugh. She was curious and wanted to know what was going on and how everyone was doing, even as a little girl. She was tuned in. It made her an excellent friend and caretaker.

I remember her petting one of her cats (or maybe mine… a love of cats was one thing on which we agreed), and the way her fingers rolled over the fur and rippled under the cat’s chin was so sensitive, so natural. She drew out the purr, and I could almost hear it echo in her own throat. A moment of communion and shared satisfaction.

In therapy last year, my therapist asked me to close my eyes and imagine a place or a memory where I felt most safe and content. The image came quickly, surely: the field in Mendocino with Alli. I hadn’t thought of that summer trip, one that Scott and Deb had invited me on when Allison and I were about ten, in a long time. But I was immediately transported to the field of dry, tall grass outside of the old farmhouse we stayed in, where the coastal fog would sit heavy in the mornings and give way to luminous sheets of yellow and gold. We played tag and hide and seek, and took quiet walks before dinner, the grass higher than our shoulders. A liminal world where everything began and ended in this hug of grass that enveloped us. We were getting older, but there was still this rustle of magic in the big universe.

I’ve learned in my therapy to go back there over and over, any time I need to find my footing or harness my strength, and especially in the times when I feel most like a little girl adrift. And there’s the sea salt and the crickets and the warm, parched earth. And there’s Allison, too.

We were little girls whose big girl lives took us in different directions. But I knew Allison at the most pure, indelible moment. I know only a handful of birthdays or phone numbers by heart, but I’ll never forget hers. Or what her room looked like, or that she kept Lisa Frank stationery in a desk drawer, or the stretchy fabric headbands she wore, or that she wanted to be the Pink Power Ranger when we played, or the way she held the pen in her hand when she drew. That’s the singular power of a first best friendship, etched in soft clay, just in time, before things hardened.

A few years back, Allison's brother got married.  As his sister, Allison was scheduled to give a toast at the reception.  She took the mic looking uncomfortable, and began "It hasn't always been easy being Ben's sister..."   She had captured the attention of everyone, as we held our breath wondering what it the world was coming next.  She worked her way into a funny, honest, and delightful toast that was one of the surprise moments of the week-end.

The same week-end was her father's birthday party.  Although everybody knew Allison was, well, unconventional, she really did understand how important it was to have so much of the family together celebrating the day.