To the girl next door:
Miranda Lambert sings this song called “The House That Built Me.” It’s about someone’s childhood home, and all the experiences that shaped her—doing homework in the bedroom, leaving handprints in the concrete, the beloved dog buried under the oak tree in the backyard.
The house that built me would have to be the one with yellow-gold metal siding and a Japanese Maple out front, its feathery leaves the color of red wine.
Thinking of that house inevitably leads me to thinking of you, the girl next door. Funny, I don’t actually remember meeting you, but I do remember the first time I saw you. You were drinking a glass of milk in your kitchen. I spied you through the window and nearly flipped my lid.
We’d had older boys for neighbors at our last house—companions for my brothers, but mostly annoyances for me. But this, this was something different. I couldn’t seem to talk fast enough as I relayed the earth-shifting information to my parents:
“There’s a little girl next door! There’s a little girl next door!”
We went over right away. Your mom answered the door. You were still finishing your lunch, she said, but after that you could play.
It was the day my childhood truly began. After all, playing just isn’t the same until you have someone to play with.
You were only three, a few years younger than me, but that didn’t stop us. When you started school, you went to a private one, not public school like me, but that just made our friendship more special—it existed in its own realm, untouched by things happening elsewhere in our lives.
Most of my early life is a fog these days, but there are bright pockets of memories, and you feature in a good many of them:
Swinging on swingsets, mine homemade, yours store-bought. Once, one of my homemade swings broke while you were on it. You fell on a rock and cried and I felt bad. Looking back, I’m glad your dad didn’t sue us! We got better swings after that.
You saw Beauty and the Beast before me, and told me all about it. I told you all about the soap operas you weren’t allowed to watch. Scary movies, too. I once told your poor mom the entire plot of Gremlins 2. Kudos to her for hanging in there.
You tried to teach me gymnastics, but I was terrible at it—I couldn’t do that special “catch the dollar bill in your feet” cartwheel to save my life. Didn’t stop us from dressing in leotards and pretending to be Nadia Comăneci.
I still have that picture. It survived our house fire back in 2014. One lightning strike, and we had to live in my brother’s basement for a month and a trailer for the next eleven. It didn’t bother me, because no one got hurt. Between me and the firefighters, we got all four cats plus seven birds out safely, which was all that mattered.
I remember the day your house caught on fire. How we were outside with your mom when we smelled smoke and your mom thought it was your dad in the backyard, burning leaves. Then we rounded the corner and saw bright flames dancing on a corner of your roof. Your mom screamed, “My house!” and I didn’t get why she was so upset—it was just a tiny bit of fire.
I had no idea.
I remember your orange cat, Moe. He was old and didn’t like me, but I’m so glad the firefighters rescued him too, that day. Though I don’t think he was ever quite the same after that.
No one got seriously hurt in your fire, thank goodness, but we sure did seem to get injured a lot in those days. You fell off that swing. I fell off a chair and bashed my head. I sliced my thumb with a razor blade we found in some random box in my basement. Which, I confess, wasn’t an accident like everyone thought. I saw the blade, knew what it was, got curious just how sharp it might be. Even I was surprised by the sudden line of blood running all the way down to my elbow. When I told you to go get my mom, you didn’t hesitate for a second.
I remember when you stepped on that awful bit of metal that got embedded in your big toe. I stood on your porch while you cried and your parents tried to pull it out. I kept telling you how brave you were. It was all I could think to say.
I thought I was gonna die that time your dad took me on Woodward on his motorcycle. Before that I’d only ever been on a dirt bike in the woods, and I was clench-tooth terrified I’d end up a bloody smear on the pavement and he wouldn’t even know I’d fallen off. So glad I held on!
Your parents were cool though. Your mom had long silky hair and wore rings on her toes. She took care of me after I had pneumonia and let me wear mittens on my feet, which I thought was funny. Your dad had a big bushy beard and a Canadian accent which is probably the reason that, to this day, I still sometimes say “sore-y” instead of “sorry.”
I remember how you said things, especially the precise way you spelled your name for everyone, because it wasn’t a traditional spelling.
You liked how I said some things, too, like that time you thought it was hilarious when I randomly grunted “Jingle Bells” while hefting myself out of a beanbag chair.
You did not like it when you fell on your cross country skis and couldn’t get up and I just stood nearby saying, “I think I’ll just wait here.”
Skiing incident aside, we had some great winters, didn’t we? Especially that one time it snowed for ages and then freezing rain fell on top, resulting in a pristine layer of ice crusted over several inches of snow. We spent the whole next day sliding on our bellies like penguins, the ice not even cracking beneath us. We went everywhere—even your not-so-nice neighbor’s backyard, gliding between brown remnants of summer plants poking up out of the ice. Behind us, we left not a mark, not a trace. He couldn’t yell at us if he never found out. The little thrill of that defiant act still tingles inside my heart.
The following day we tried again to glide like ghosts over the ice, but something had changed. We left little spiderweb cracks and dents wherever we went. The magic had faded.
Over time, our friendship faded too. We still got together, even went horseback riding at the state park a few times. After one such adventure, I commented that I’d actually be willing to sacrifice a toe, or some other small bit of myself, just to have a horse of my own. “Wouldn’t you?” I asked dreamily as we sat on your swing set, our butts squeezed tight into too-small seats.
“No,” you said, snapping me out of my daydreams. I looked at you quizzically. “I just don’t love horses as much as you do,” you explained.
Such a small statement but for my self-centered young brain it was huge. Life changing. I think that was the first time I ever realized that friends didn’t have to be the same. We could like different things, be different people, and that was okay.
Eventually we became very different, my interests remaining childlike while you moved on to fashion and boys.
And that was okay.
That is okay.
In high school, I moved away from that yellow-gold house, and eventually you moved too. We lost touch after a while, though I remember getting your college graduation announcement.
I thought of making you a mug that said, “Geology Rocks” but wasn’t sure if you’d like that.
I’m not sure what you like, these days. I don’t know you anymore. But I knew you then, and it was breathtaking. I wish everyone could’ve had a childhood like ours, full of gliding winter adventures and mischief, motorcycle rides and sleepovers. Petty fights after which we’d always make up. Innocence.
I really hope we meet again someday, but even if we don’t, nothing can change those memories. We are the only two people on earth who’ve been trapped in a tent with a literal ball of earwigs dripping over our only escape route. We’re the only two people who discovered that repeating one specific line from The Princess Bride can cure a coughing fit. We’re the only ones who slipped across the ice like spirits one crystalline winter’s day.
We may be strangers now, but your fingerprints are on my soul, and they shine like pearls in the light.
So, I guess it wasn’t the house that built me after all, but the house next door.
Or rather, the girl who lived in it.
as the HERO flies... 