One of my earliest childhood friends was a little girl named Carol Hartfelder. Carol moved into the house next door when she was three and I was five. I had seen the commotion of the moving van, and in those days of the baby boom, every home on the block had children, so we wondered what kind of children would be in this family. I soon found out, when someone commented there was a little girl in our back yard, sitting on our swingset.
Well! I was completely indignant! Imagine, someone just walking into our yard and playing on our swings without even asking our permission. I determined she was going to have a piece of my mind. Going to the back I discovered she was gone, so I marched right over to her house and rang the doorbell. I was greeted by a woman, probably in her late twenties or early thirties (younger than my mom, who was 38 at that time). I asked her if she had a daughter who had been over on our swings. I guess she took this that I wanted to meet and play with her daughter, so she introduced me to a sweet little girl with long, shiny, golden-brown hair and big brown eyes.
I don't remember details after that, but somehow the sin was quickly forgiven and Carol and I, despite our two year age difference became fast friends. I remember many days spent in her basement having tea parties (one of my favourite childhood activities), cooking on her pretend stove, playing Feely Meely (a game with objects in a box you had to place your hand into and guess what the items were),
Tip It (a game where you had to remove different coloured rings from pegs without knocking over a little man who balanced atop a central spire),
Kerplunk (a game where you had to remove sticks from a tube without dislodging marbles that were balanced on the sticks),
and many other similar childhood games.
In the summer we liked to play in the sandbox (her sandbox had nice, clean, fine sand, whereas ours was rocky and full of cat poop from our many felines), swing on the swingset, ride tricycles or bikes (once I finally learned to ride, which wasn't until I was seven), skip rope, and explore the neighbourhood as far as she was allowed, which was probably not more than two doors down in any direction, her mother being somewhat more protective than most of the others in the neighbourhood, and certainly much more than mine.
Carol and I usually got on quite well despite our age difference - certainly she played more with me than she did with my little sister Rosanna, who was a year her junior.
We remained friends for about three or four years. The summer I turned nine we moved to Colombia for a year. I missed Carol, but looked forward to renewing our friendship when we returned. Unfortunately that was not to be.
When we came back from Colombia I was now ten, Carol would have been eight. Soon after we returned I called on her to visit. That two year difference which seemed so minor before was suddenly huge now that I was beginning to show signs of puberty. Carol teased me about my developing breasts, and suddenly seemed so childish and silly, I went away disappointed and embarrassed, and since we now lived across town, trying to rekindle the friendship seemed pointless to me.
I've often thought of her and wondered what became of her, but perhaps she will be forever lost to me. I still remember fondly those years though, of running through the sprinkler on a sunny day, breaking rocks with hammers to see if they were sparkly inside (we were not allowed to do this of course), or blowing bubbles on the back porch. I hope you're happy, Carol, wherever you are, and that maybe you think of me sometimes too.
