Bonnie Jean...

(Carl, Me, Bonnie & Vincent 1967) (5th grade autograph book 1972) (Boston Harbor 1976)

my bestest friend in Elementary and Middle school, turns 47 years old today. She and I were inseparable and as opposite as could be: Bonnie was strawberry blonde, blue eyed and freckled face with long skinny legs. She had an older sister, Lorna and an older brother, Carl, who I crushed on for most of my adolsescence. Her parents, Big Carl and Pam were two of my favorite adults and to this day some of my most cherished memories are of times spent with the Strouts. Bonnie lived in the red cape house with the white trim three houses down and across the street on Pearl Road. Lorna and Bonnie shared a room with two twin beds, but when her brother was over a friend's house Bonnie and I would sleep in his double bed and climb out his window onto the roof of the sun porch to soak up as much sun as possible - in 1973 it was all about baby oil and roof shingle reflection. When the tall ships came to Boston during the Bicentennial, Bonnie got so sunburned from being on Uncle Bobbie's boat that she couldn't go outside for a week. Pam was always baking or sewing at her sewing machine in front of the window down the hall upstairs or dying her own wool to hand hook rugs that she designed. Working on refurbished Corvettes in the driveway, going for rides in old convertibles always with the top down, hanging on the back of motorcycles or dirtbikes around Lynn reservoir and snowmobiling on the same res during winter were a part of everyday life except that one winter when the belt from the snowmobile snapped and broke Bonnie's leg leaving her in a full leg cast and sleeping on a cot in the front dining room for what seemed like an eternity. She and I would ride our bikes or roller skate around Indian Valley and we could name every family that lived in every one of the 70 or so houses occupied at the time. One day we found an old shack in the woods at the very top of the Valley and there was this old guy who lived there who was sitting in a rocking chair wearing a bathrobe and nothing underneath. We never went back. She was so nervous on the first day of seventh grade (I was in eighth) that she threw up and I didn't get out of the way fast enough. That afternoon, we hid under the pine tree across the street from my house while I smoked a pilfered cigarette and swore her not to tell. We picked wild blueberries every summer and took first-day-of-school pictures every fall straight through high school - even when our paths had gone in two different directions. We trick-or-treated on Halloween as kids and partied on Halloween at Clark when she came for a visit. When I called to ask her to be one of my bridesmaids she said that she couldn't because she had already booked the church and the hall for the same date for her wedding. She's married now with two daughters and a son. She lives up the street from her parents and also from her brother and she shares a backyard with her sister. I've been back to our neighborhood maybe a dozen times in twenty years. We still send each other Christmas cards. Her dad once told her ours was a friendship she would always remember. Forty years later, I couldn't agree more.