It’s a rare thing in our transient and fickle world to meet with the kind of steadfastness and constancy that spans decades. How could I have known that in my ninth year, when my greatest desire was to spend an afternoon with my nose in a book, that I would find my first real and enduring friend? She turns 50 today, and it seems fitting to mark the milestone with a tribute of sorts. It was the late 70’s when we met, when summers were spent running through sprinklers and being told to “just go outside,” before the Adam Walsh incident injected fear into the suburbs and parents hovered, constant hawk-eyed supervisors. At nine, we’d both ridden our bikes to the community rec center to discover that hanging on the bulletin board was a holy grail disguised as a tattered and smudged sign-up sheet for lessons in horsemanship, something that required no experience or skill with a ball of any kind.
An instant friendship began as Linda and I penciled our names on the list. Turned out she was also in the fourth grade at my school, both of us transplants into central Florida that year. My father had been transferred from a military base in South Carolina, and hers within PanAm from the island of Antigua. In the interest of saving gas money, our parents alternated carting us to and from the barn that summer–and every weekend for the next five years. That first summer together we learned how to curry a horse’s coat, clean out a hoof, and ride. From there, we worked at the stables in exchange for lessons, mucking stalls, creosoting miles of fencing, and oiling endless tack.
Our chief language was equine-speak. When we weren’t at the stable riding actual horses, we played with model horses instead of Barbies. We alternated between being famous trainers with our stables full of noble steeds to making up dramatic sagas with the horses playing speaking roles as they journeyed through treacherous arctic tundra or across barren prairies. Occasionally, we’d even hitch one another up using robe ties or belts and careen around the yard clearing broomsticks between lawn chairs. When we could entice my younger brother to play, we’d enlist him to catch a handful of green and brown anoles, the lightning-fast small lizards that bask in the Florida sun. Fashioning “reins” out of yarn, we’d hitch the unfortunate reptiles to “carts” made of leaves and drive them around on scalding sidewalks. Eventually we released them, but I’m sure generations of these creatures told strange and horrible tales about their giant captors to their stunned offspring.
We spent so much time together between fourth and ninth grade that our families were interchangeable. We called each other’s parents mom and dad and were as comfortable in each other’s kitchens, bedrooms, and yards as our own. I was the fourth girl born into my family, and Linda was the first (and oldest child) in hers. This birth order may be the reason she rankled at comparisons, never bearing labels or playing designated roles. She is exactly three months older than I am, a fact I liked to point out smugly as we grew, both of us late bloomers in middle school, but she enough later that I lorded it over her, my one pathetic competitive edge. Being brought up in the “no worries” Caribbean island atmosphere may have had a part in her naturally breezy and que sera sera approach to life, which fascinated me since it was decidedly different from my more rules-based childhood. Once (and only once), she came to church with us and during communion impetuously demanded to know why she “couldn’t have one of those little wafer thingies.” Glancing wide-eyed down the pew at my father, I mumbled something about having to talk to the priest first and shushed her to be quiet.
At Linda’s house they played soundtracks—albums from The King & I and My Fair Lady, while at mine we heard Pat Benetar and Michael Jackson courtesy of my older sisters. It was just as well because she danced like a thespian with flair, not an 80’s teenager emulating characters from a John Hughes movie. She peppered casual conversations with vintage movie stars I’d never heard of and was the only person alive I’d ever met who’d read more and more widely than I had. She constantly handed me books–whole series of them–that she’d finished in a week, forcing me to up my game and reading capacity. She never wanted to waste an afternoon in front of the TV; growing up in the British Isles had spared her some American vices. When I was with Linda, we climbed trees outside, in kingdoms of the “Tree People,” with names like Queen Oleander and Princess Poppy. We’d ride our bikes for miles, often ending up at the Ben Franklin drug store in the Plaza, in predetermined dramatized roles where we’d speak in only loud butchered Spanish, as if the suburban moms and sales clerks couldn’t see straight through our lame middle school antics. No chance either of us could be mistaken for exotic Latin travelers, despite our single Spanish class in junior high branding us Luisita and Bonita, names we call each other to this day. Or, one of us would lead the other one–who one day would be blind, the next day deaf– through the store, either for attention (me) or practicing for future dramatic scripts (her).
She was coltish–tall, thin, and easily tanned, completely unconcerned with middle school popularity or pop culture of any kind. By eleven, she already moved through the world like a movie star or model, long-legged with her hands floating in practiced, graceful gestures. Her innocent gray-green eyes and quick giggle belied an unmatched vocabulary and imagination, not to mention a cultivated lack of blind acceptance for authority or that anything should be so just because an arbitrary adult declared it. Knowing this last to be true, I was astounded when I heard she’d enlisted in the Army years later, once I’d moved away to dutifully attend college. Seeing her in fatigues was like seeing a peacock hula hoop atop a polar bear–preposterous! In true Linda form, her Army experience resembled little of what I knew of the military from my own family. She was a journalist, stationed in Germany and Fort Knox, even snagging a spot on the Churchill Downs infield to cover the Kentucky Derby itself–the horse race we’d once dreamed of attending as either trainers or jockeys ourselves. Of course I wasn’t surprised.
reading, always reading 
bridesmaid 
Off Broadway in NYC 
trying Korean bbq, NYC 
1977, the year we met 
lunch in NYC
It’s been over forty years since that sign-up sheet knit us together as life-long friends. She’s a New-York sophisticate now, traveling the world with her interesting and talented husband and occasionally singing with his band. She plays different roles now: carefree aunt and sweet daughter, charming hostess and, when I visit, intrepid taxi-hailer and city tour guide. She wears funky jewelry and browses vintage thrift stores for the kinds of clothes she’s always been drawn to–distinct, unique, with character, clothes that mimic her personality traits. We still trade book recommendations and stories about horses. I still call her mother “mom.” We’ll always be different–that’s what I love about her. I’ll probably always nurse a shred of jealousy over her confident, sure-footedness and the way she navigates without hesitation through life which is, come to think of it, a lot like the horses we rode endlessly under that hot Florida sun. Happy Birthday, Luisita!
