My friend Beth and I met on the very first day of fourth grade, on the bus that was to take us to our new school. We had both been chosen to go to a special school for “gifted” children for the next three years – the very opposite of the mainstreaming of students of differing needs that is the accepted practice in education today. I think it was a bit of an educational experiment that only lasted a few years. Whatever the case, we very quickly became inseparable. As is often the case with longterm friends who live hundreds of miles apart, we have not always been perfect at keeping in touch over the years, but in the last two decades we’ve been pretty tight. When the pandemic hit we started Saturday morning Zoom and then FaceTime calls that I look forward to all week.
This month marks 50 years since that first day of fourth grade. Fifty years of friendship. We celebrated with a long weekend staying in an Airbnb on the East Side of Providence (home of Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, amazing bakeries and restaurants, and stunning old homes). We used the apartment as our base of operations for exploring our old neighborhood, our old teenage stomping grounds of the East Side and downtown Providence (we were experts at taking city buses from an early age), and for going a little farther afield. We took a narrated boat tour of the Providence River and learned some new things about the history of Providence. We drove out to Point Judith, Rhode Island to take the ferry to Block Island for the day — to ride bikes along the country lanes and drink Del’s frozen lemonade in the shade (Beth had Del’s, I had ice cream).
To give a play-by-play of the entire long weekend would take many paragraphs. Suffice it to say a grand time was had by all and I am so thankful to have this dear friend who is really family to me. I love you, Beth! Thank you for planning the entire weekend and for being my friend all of these years.
