Crush Trauma

We are just over 2 years apart and from the time I was about 8 til my freshman year, we lived, as the crow flies a block apart. Each of us in our own heads, our own problems but always knowing the other one was close. I suppose it is the way of kids, in their own heads to miss things, both good and bad. I missed the abuse and on the other side of the coin, I missed the fact that when he was 5, he fell in love.

A girl, right in between our ages, moved in a couple of houses east of his house... and to a 5 year old white boy she was a true beauty. Long black hair, dark eyes and bronze skin. Later in life he found out she was adopted from a nearby Native American community and when I look back she was probably one of the last to be adopted outside of her tribe (thank goodness... long story but thank goodness)

Anyway, the three of us spent the summer riding bikes, running through sprinklers, playing hide and seek on the street after dark.. a true gen x childhood, with all the ugliness hidden behind the idyllic pastimes. I remember distinctly that I could not show up at his house to go play without him wanting to go ask May if she could come too, nor did he show up at my house very often without her. There was no jealousy, she just fit in... Then one day, shortly after school started, my little showed up at my house and I remember him being upset, but as a kid, his psychological trauma didn't register with me.

Seems that on a Saturday morning she was riding her bike over to see him and she was barefoot.. yep, you know where this is going. Her foot slipped and her toes were ground up in her front spokes. He yelled for his dad and my dear uncle cleaned her up, bandaged her and carried her home. My cousin was so frustrated because as good as friends as we were, we were never allowed in her house, so he came to us where at least there were popsicles.

The worst part about this is, come Monday, she was not in school, even though he was just in kindergarten he knew his way around and waited for her outside her classroom until the janitor sent him home.. then this poor little boy sat on her step for several hours, as dark fell my mom went and got him. We couldn't understand his upset. But come to find out, that for years, he thought the foot injury killed her and nobody told him.

As he matured, he knew better, but still could not get her off his mind.. he gleaned as much information as he could from his dad and as time passed she faded in his memory.. That is until a funeral. a woman he helped for years (As he matured, my little cousin became known for helping the elderly) passed and it turns out his crush was a great niece.. and this woman was one of the few adults that was truly kind to her as a child.. so by serendipity they reconnected and are great friends now.

But the story doesn't end there, last weekend my sister and I went to to the town of our childhood to haunt the Big Horn Mountains (heckin brookie didn't know what hit them) and to go through the albums left behind by our oldest cousin that had passed the year before. In those pictures were several of my sister where I almost didn't recognize her, apparently as a toddler she went through a phase where she had copper colored hair and I was too deep in my head to remember it.

As I was commenting on her hair, grown up little cousin, was remembering the memory of his crush and asking me what I remembered of her. My sister was fascinated by the color of her hair and commented "Wow, Jeanne you are right, really doesn't look like me, but it must be because here is a picture of the 6 of us. Wait 7 of us. Who is the little dark haired girl in the middle?" I casually glanced at the picture and said.. "oh that is just..." Yeah, cousin went over the table to get to that picture.. then he took a picture of it and texted it to her. He was overjoyed to have one little picture of her and she called him in tears. Seems in the adoption and the quest to take the Native out of the girl all of the pictures of her childhood were "lost", but here was one, one picture of what she describes as the best summer of her childhood, the happy memories of riding her bike up and down the street, racing us, watermelon and fireflies... and a sweet little boy that never forgot her.