Friends share a Tree moment

I was at a lovely Cascade foothill lake today and saw this sweet little boy and girl sitting and talking and smiling and sharing their obvious friendship on these large branches. It was a poignant moment bringing back to me my own very precious childhood memories of my first "real true" and meaningful friendship.

It was with a little boy from Yugoslavia named Drago. His family came to this country as post wartime refugees in the early 1950's sponsored by my parent's church. They needed housing so my grandfather build an apt. above one of the garages where some the trucks for his tree nursery were parked and where some maintenance went on. At the time Drago's family came to the Ohio he was two years old and we were only a month apart in age. We formed a friendship very young , and I always thought the apt. over the garage was just another "normal" home where my friend lived.

As we grew up together we played each day in the tree nursery---so we had lots of open space, woods, garages etc. to explore around. There eventually were four kids in each of our families and Drago and I were in the middle. He had two older sisters and one younger brother born in the Ohio. I have one older brother and two younger ones. We all played together for many years---at least a good nine years and Drago and I went all through elementary school together. We were best friends and we had so many long talks I remember that now seem rather "deep" in nature for kids our age. We had a special little place we'd to in the woods with little stumps we sat on. My world evolved around Drago being there each day to play with, walk to school with, imagine make believe things with, make mud pies with and play baseball with. Ride bikes and make snow forts and get into heaps of mischief in my dad's nursery. Once we innocently poked holes into stacked up peat moss bags to watch it slowly and rather beautifully dribble out----it was a costly loss of potential sales of this peat moss and we paid the price with paddlings I think altho neither of us really understood why back then.

Many games of capture the flag, sharing birthday parties and swinging on grapevines along the "cow" path to school later, Drago's family moved to the "country" to live in a lovely home his father became caretaker of. My world was shattered as it had seemed without him, I was all alone. I was a shy child and he and I lived across a few roads from the majority of other kids at school. I became even quieter and began to emotionally eat and was lonesome. But as time went on I carried that special intense little friendship inside me and slowly began to form some new friendships in girl scouts and school. I didn't have a lot of friends, didn't hang out in a crowd, ...but the friends I did form are my good friends today. Ones I have shared on blip and the ones who flew from Alaska and Ca. to care for me after my knee surgeries. I cherish the deeper relationships I have formed with others...a few but very very precious ones.

I attribute this ability to value and nurture my friends to my dear first friend Drago as he taught me how to be a friend. So , after all this rambling, that is what came to mind seeing these two little "friends on the tree" at the lake. I saw Drago once after I was in college when he returned to Ohio to visit his Dad. His dad worked for mine in the tree business. His parents split up and his mom and the other kids moved to Illinois to live with her mother who had relocated there. At the time we saw each other when we were in our later teens we laughed and thought neither one of us had changed---which of course we had---I was in bell bottoms and wore a seed necklace and a peace symbol and he had long hair and looked like some images of "Jesus" ha ha.

We lost touch again until my younger brother located him in California and had Drago call me on my 49th birthday to say Happy Birthday!!! I thought it was a call from my cousin Ken and was in shock when he said it was Drago.. I really didn't believe him at first. It was a great reconnection...facebook friends now altho neither of us use that often and I have some childhood photos he sent to me of his family during his years above the garage. One is of Drago and me sitting together on a big boulder which I will try to upload to my blipfolio in portraits. (too small a file to do that so I'll take a picture of the picture as my blip for tomorrow)

I doubt this will be read as it is really for me...I was pretty emotional thinking of all these memories and decided it's time I put them to print .So Drago wherever you are....this one's for you....a true friend you really were.