After I posted my "firsts" in response to the open call yesterday, I reread it, and began to wonder where Michele was (first sleepover, I was deeply in love with her older brother before I hit puberty), and how she was doing.

 I was sitting here at my computer, and just for the hell of it, I googled  her name.  I got one hit, and it was for a high school reunion group for the high school she went to.  I went to that page, but no joy.  Hmmm.

I logged onto Facebook, which I never, ever do (I haven't even bothered to fill out my profile), and took a chance that she might be there.  Luckily,
"Koff" isn't all that common a name, and within seconds, lo and behold, there she was.

 I still wasn't quite sure it was my Michele, since she didn't have a picture of herself up, and after scrolling through her friends, didn't think I recognized any of them, either.  Of course, the last time I had contact with her, my almost 30-year-old daughter wasn't quite a year old, and Michele and I were both single, sort of coasting along until we decided what we were going to make of ourselves.

I don't know why or how we lost touch...we just did.

I met Michele when we both in the fifth grade.  She and I both were in  what they call GATE classes in California - I think it stands for something like "gifted and talented" - and we immediately hit it off.  I was slightly jealous of her...her mother was Japanese, and Michele had the gorgeous porcelain skin and jet black hair given to her by her mother.  I found out soon afterwards that our fathers worked together, so it was a friendship blessed by both families from the start.

 We were both athletic, joining first the city track team around age 11 (the Santa Barbara Sandpipers), and then later our high schools track teams.  It was so odd: we practiced during the week together as teammates, and ran the mile relay as half the team, but during the two or three times a year our high schools competed we had to run against each other.  It felt so wrong to compete against her that usually neither one of us tried all that hard to beat the other.  It just wasn't right, somehow.

I had a couple of horses, and Michele and I spent days upon days just exploring the hills around Santa Barbara, and the beach on horseback.  She might not have been able to own a horse (they lived in a subdivision), but she had the next best thing, and the horse she always rode became hers in all but name.

We once tried to cheat on a vocabulary test in the fifth grade, writing up tiny little slips of paper, writing the words so small that our hands cramped up in the effort.  Little did we know that the very act of trying to write everything smaller and smaller effectively committed the words to memory, and we didn't need to cheat.

Michele, her sister Kimiyo, and I used to carry on long rambling conversations in pig latin, speaking it so fast that it mystified her two older brothers, and just about everyone else that ever heard us do it.  Eventually one of us would trip up on some word, and we would all end up in whoops of laughter, barely able to breathe.  Then we would pick  those dark plums from their tree in the backyard, filling our tucked up t-shirts with them, and lie in the grass, watching the clouds pass by, and eating so many plums that the inside of our mouths would break out in bumps.

Michele's parents were unique among the other parents of kids in our group: we enjoyed being around them, and they were always welcome to come sit in the living room with the fifteen or sixteen teenagers and watch the latest scary movie with us - lights off, of course.

Her dad would get up in the middle of the night to take us grunion hunting, usually somewhere around two or three in the morning, and her mom would even filet, clean and cook the damn things for us.  My clearest memory of her dad is a mind snapshot of him sitting on a blanket on the beach, a full moon overhead, and he is laughing at us floundering around in the surf, trying to catch these tiny fish with our hands.

When I found her name on Facebook last night, I sent a tentative message to her, asking if she was the same Michele...the one with a sister named Kimiyo, two dreamy older brothers, and parents that had just about adopted me.

I got a reply this morning:

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I've missed you!!!!!!  Looked for you all over the place.  Was absolutely THRILLED to see your name.   Please call me ASAP  I live in XXXX, CA What about you? Are you still East of the Mississippi somewhere?  I can't wait to hear from you.  Seriously, call me as soon as you get this!!!

Love my old friend,
Michele

She had included her home and cell phone numbers, so as soon as I had a quiet minute, I called.

For some weird reason, I was nervous, but I'm not sure why.  It had been close to thirty years since we'd had any contact, and I didn't know if this new Michele was my Michele, the one I'd often wished was my sister.

She knew who it was before I even said a word, and within seconds of hearing each other's voice, we were both in tears, laughing and crying at the same time.  I think we talked for close to three hours, and we're making tentative plans for me to fly out there next summer, and meet the children that should have been my neices and nephews - she has four.

She was still my Michele, and the only regret I have about calling her was that I didn't do it twenty years ago.  I went so long without the friendship of the only soulmate I've ever found, and went without needlessly.  I've promised myself I won't let that happen ever, ever again.

Right before we hung up, Michele said, "I always meant to thank you."

I laughed.  "For what?"

"For making my childhood so wonderful, and giving me all these great memories."

I should be the one thanking her, I think.