The most memorable best friend in my life was my best friend for less than two years, two glorious years, and the memory of her stands out so much that I forget it was only two years. In my head it seems as if we were best friends forever. Or maybe it’s because she was the only best friend I ever had.
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We barely knew each other until I invited her to my grandfather’s farm and from that moment on we we seemed like soulmates for our brief time through adolescence. We had the same name, Kay and Kay, and had to differentiate ourselves in some way, so we called ourselves KZ and KT.
It happened that in sixth grade, there was a CARE commercial on television that made so much of an impression on me that I pitched the idea of a CARE club to KZ. As the images of poor, starving Africans rolled across the screen, the tv commercial explained that along with giving them food, the CARE organization was giving them tools, so that they could grow their own food.
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“Give them food and they eat for a day. Give them tools and they eat forever.”
I thought this was genius! Why had no one thought of this before?
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So I pitched the idea to KZ, who became the PR person, inviting all our friends to join. I was far too shy to gather a group together on my own. KZ was the outgoing, vivacious, sociable one. I could barely whisper a word to anyone in those days. In fact, when I visited a homepage for my hometown school’s memories, there was only one person who had a comment about me. “Quiet” is all that it said.
So KZ put out the word and the CARE club met and brainstormed and planned and we eventually went out to Christmas Carol as our first and only fundraiser. We took a large coffee tin, and taped a handmade CARE label on it. We raised $50 that night, but it wasn’t the most pleasant of evenings. It was cold and damp and misting, a typical south Texas Christmas, and the people we sang to, with our untrained, tiny little voices, weren’t particularly impressed, or friendly, to our surprise. None of them asked why we were raising money, never noticed the label on the can. They just opened their doors and sometimes smiled, sometimes not, but almost all of them threw a little change into the can, sometimes a whole dollar.
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By the end of the evening the tin was full. KZ had missed the event, staying home with a sore throat, so we stopped at her house that night, for our very last stop, to share our success with her. We dumped the spoils out on her couch excitedly and counted our bounty. She wanted to keep it and reinvest. Her plans were to create a theatrical production where we could bring in even more donations. I was tempted.
My mother frowned on the idea and explained it was misleading to solicit funds for one thing and then re-direct them for something else and I had to agree with her. So, we sent a money order to CARE the very next day. There never was another CARE meeting after that, my parents divorced soon after and we moved.
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Sometimes I think that perhaps KZ had the better idea. Who knows? She put on a spectacular production that year, at the 6th grade talent show. I got to dance in it with a lot of other girls and was amazed at the way she choreographed and directed us. It was a brilliant production and it all came from her. There were straw bales stacked strategically around the stage and we were dressed like country girls, … hair in pigtails and ribbons … shirts with country style print .. rolled up shorts …jumping up and down on the straw bales, singing and dancing to some country song. she separated us into a few small groups, each group doing something different … layering her choreography like the hand of a master, as if she’d been doing it all of her life ..
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KZ was born for the theater and for many years she was successfully headed in that direction.
She was phenomenal, truly phenomenal, in her creativity. Hers was probably the most dynamic and talented personalities that I have ever known.
Not only could she direct and choreograph, she could act and sing and dance at a level so exceptional I’m sure she would have been one of the most remarkable actresses this world has ever seen if she had made it to the big screen. I don’t think that anyone who remembers her from that time could argue with that.
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I watched her bring down the house when she came to perform at one of the junior highs I. attended, two years after the CARE club.
She never knew I was there, her old best friend, watching her perform what perhaps was the best performance of her life. We’d lost touch once I’d moved away.
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In a pair of curlers and an old house robe, acting like a slouchy old housewife, KZ shuffled across the stage and she brought down the house by her brilliant performance, with raging applause and many curtain calls. We had watched a number of plays that day because it was a multi-school competition. Schools from small towns and districts all around us had come to compete.
But no one got an ovation like this. No one, except KZ. I can still see her in that pink, sagging house robe and hair curlers, bowing to the audience. The applause were well earned. I was so proud of her I could burst, but never got to tell her that.
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The students, especially the boys, stampeded down the halls to meet KZ that day, once the plays were over. There was no way I could have gotten through the thick crowd around her, so I didn’t bother to try.
I heard that several of them drove 30 miles to our little small town to try and date her …..
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She went on to win many awards and competitions, County Fair Queen, Miss SW Texas. I learned of all the awards second hand, but always felt proud. She was voted one of the top 50 most beautiful people at the University of Texas in Austin, a big deal for small town people like us, but no surprise.
We crossed paths a couple of times over the decades, but we lived in different worlds each time.
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I will always treasure my memories of her, how she lit up my life, … we explored every creek, every tree, every field and empty lot in our little home town, which was blessed with creeks that ran with clear, bubbling, pristine water, and many cliffs to climb. At my grandparent’s house we explored every part of my Papa’s cow pasture and every inch of the old cotton gin. We laid by the railroad tracks and screamed and laughed with hysterics as the trains roared by, inches away. We lived for excitement in 5th and 6th .grade.
That is all. Those days are over, she once said to me. But not for me, as long as my memory is in tact, the memory of her glorious and radiant energy will forever live in me. And I wish and pray for her all of the best in the world. She deserves it. But few of us get what we deserve in this life. That’s not how it works, sadly. In the end, I suspect we’ll all appreciate the life that we lived, no matter what was given and what was chosen, both the bitter and the sweet. That’s also how it works … so far it seems.
One thing I know for sure is that for all of us, life is a gift, a temporary gift. So I remind myself to be grateful, whatever cards have been dealt.
Watching the biographies of artists who’ve given so much to this world, who too often left this earthly plane, betrayed in the end and with love unrequited, with unrealized dreams, makes me realize that much of life is agony, in almost all of our lives. For some of us, it comes later in life and we trip over our own built up cockiness. Those who were humbled at an earlier age, I believe, fare better in the end. But I’m certainly no expert. The only thing I know for sure is your life is short, it’s a gift, so be true to it as you can.
Oikos 