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The Value of Friendship
By Tara Swords
, and that was unchangeable.
"Kids care more about friendship at a young age than they are able to say," says Berndt. "If you ask them, they say a friend is someone you play with, who you give your toys to, and who doesn't fight with you. But clearly it goes beyond that if you're dealing with friendships that have lasted a while."
That was true for us. I think we understood the value of our friendship, but rarely talked about it.
Some evenings after dark, when we were assumed to be taking baths or doing homework in our own homes, I would sneak over to her house and enter through the garage door that led to the basement – just so we could talk a while longer. I now know that there is something pristine and innocent in that time when young girls will steal away into the night just to spend time with a best friend, something that – when later replaced with late-night phone calls to boys – can never be reclaimed.
Some nights after the sun had long since retired, we would march a mile or two into the cornfields that stretched out behind our subdivision as far as the eye could see. After about 45 minutes of walking huddled together with the flashlight beam jumping nervously, we would reach a tiny, century-old graveyard tucked away and forgotten in the middle of the field. Half amazed and half scared to death, we would shine the beam on the crumbling tombstones to read the names and dates, wondering what sort of people had lived there before us. We always felt most sad when the dates on the stones were too close together. Though we were but children ourselves, it must have made us confront our own mortality, and there was comfort in not doing that alone. I remember feeling horror at the idea that of all the important events in our lives, only the dates of two would serve as evidence that we had existed.
