The Summer After Fifth Grade

It was the summer after fifth grade. I was 11 years old. I had lived at 49 13th Avenue in a white two-story house with black shutters since I wore diapers. There was a wooden swing in the backyard, a crab apple tree that made the perfect hiding spot, a swingset with rings, a swing that spung in a circle and a plastic Big Bird thing. There was a weeping willow and a small garden. I don’t know what mom grew there but I only remember pumpkins. Dad cut a hole in the fence and all the neighborhood kids came to our yard to escape into the field behind our block.

Kathee and Ericka were my best friends and had been since I wore diapers. I don’t remember a sleepover, a church Sunday School class or a summer camp without them at my side wearing gigantic red and blue plastic glasses, mismatched shoes and frizzy bangs. I knew two phone numbers by heart. Kathee's and Ericka’s. I still know them.

That was the summer my family movved.

That was the summer Kathee left.

My family didn’t move far. Close enough to go to the same high school I would have from 13th Avenue, but far enough to change elementary schools.

Kathee moved far. All the way to what was then Zaire. Ericka, Kathee and I bought a BFF necklace that came in three pieces. We divided it up at the airport and gave Kathee the middle piece. I was crying so hard when their plane took off that I barely made it out of the airport. My heart was breaking and I didn’t think anything could ever hurt worse.

It is the summer after fifth grade for Maggie and Henry. They will be 11 in two months. They have lived at this house since they wore diapers (or at least Maggie still wore them when we moved here). They have played with the same kids since the day we set up with what we had saved from Somaliland which was essentially nothing.

Now Henry and Maggie are saying goodbye to friends and they are the ones leaving. Leaving Africa and going to America. Leaving the house where they learned French and a little Somali, where Lego battles took over the living room, where light saber battles waged, where a punching bag hung from the ceiling in the middle of the sitting room, where we make chocolate chunk cookies and work fast to keep the chocolate squares from melting. Leaving the yard where they rode bikes and hunted Easter eggs and tried to keep cats alive. Leaving the friends they hiked volcanoes with and camped under the stars and swam among whale sharks with.

I survived.

I know they will too.

But things change.

When I last checked, the field where we climbed into holes and discovered the trail of covered wagon trains and hid from imagined homeless men wielding rusty shovels is a complex of corporate offices.