So There!

“Our persistent friendship continued despite the day ‘they’ separated us (or maybe because of that day). After all, who knows how the ill meaning or well-meaning choices of adults will ultimately affect children? That day—the last day of kindergarten—was traumatic for us both. Our teacher divided her students into two lines—one to go to Miss Karandy’s first grade class, the other headed to the first grade class across the hall. I followed instructions to get in one line, never even considering that Beth might not be right behind me.”—Kathryn E. Livingston 

Words & Wonder

By Kathryn E. Livingston

“This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.”―Margaret Atwood

PORTLAND Maine—(Hubris)—August 2025—We met on the first day of kindergarten. I remember that my mother and Beth’s (not her real name) had a conversation in the back of the classroom (every mother was there on that day to offer her child moral support). Mom had found out that Beth’s family lived around the corner from us and she thought we might become playmates. Little did she suspect that our play-mating would last more than 60 years. But sometimes you meet someone and you “just click.” That’s how it was. 

 We were a duo in grade school, junior high, and high school, and our friendship survived through college, marriage, divorce (for Beth), children (for me), careers, and into our elder years. As kids, we played in our yards and on the street all summer long, and after school on weekdays and on weekends we convened either at Beth’s house or mine until dinnertime. Though we didn’t attend the same college we spent summers together in our hometown of Schenectady, New York. Of course, she was my maid of honor (my husband and I married in my parents’ house, a modest gathering of fewer than 25 relatives and close friends), and I was hers in Beth’s Reformed church a few years later. 

The universe found unexpected ways to make sure we weren’t separated in adulthood; when my husband rented our first apartment in Washington Heights, he had no idea where Beth lived, though he was aware she was attending nursing school somewhere in Manhattan. 

“I’m moving to New York after the wedding!  I nailed a magazine job and we’ll be able to get together in the city,” I phoned Beth excitedly from New Paltz, where I’d been reporting for a local newspaper. 

“What’s the address?” she asked.

“Um . . . 170th between Fort Washington Avenue and Broadway.” 

“Where? Are you kidding? That’s literally one block from me.” 

Later, after her marriage ended, Beth moved to New Jersey—a mile away from the town in which my husband and I had settled when we had our first child. Of course, that was by design, and I helped Beth find an apartment where she lived until eight years ago when she relocated to Maine to be near her brother (sadly, he passed away not long after).

We were nothing if not devoted to one another, and I only recall one fight (in fifth grade, over my absurd disapproval of her rush to shave her legs and get a stylish haircut.) We could have had one more fight when she briefly dated my ex-boyfriend, but she asked my permission first and I was already married by then. I felt more annoyed with my ex than with her anyway.

In kindergarten we were one another’s shadow. We would sit on the floor with our large picture books in our laps and trace our index fingers along the sentences as if we were reading though neither of us knew how. Naughty and mischievous from the start, we thought this would impress the teacher and make our classmates envious. 

As the years passed, we did many more naughty things—spitting lemonade through the spaces in our front teeth from my porch to the sidewalk, holding hands and plunging into a huge puddle on the way home from school just for fun and then telling my mother we accidentally fell in, placing slices of peanut buttered bread in the road and waiting for cars to smash them (why?), stealing cigarettes from her mother’s stash, drinking and smoking pot, and much, much more, always having each other’s back, and only getting caught occasionally (as when in our senior year Beth’s parents went away for a weekend and we hosted a huge party that included the potheads and the football team and really wasn’t a very clever idea at all).

Our persistent friendship continued despite the day “they” separated us (or maybe because of that day). After all, who knows how the ill meaning or well-meaning choices of adults will ultimately affect children? That day—the last day of kindergarten—was traumatic for us both. Our teacher divided her students into two lines—one to go to Miss Karandy’s first grade class, the other headed to the first grade class across the hall. 

I followed instructions to get in one line, never even considering that Beth might not be right behind me. But suddenly, when I glanced across the hall, there she was—in the line for the other class. Both of our little six-year-old hearts sank as we gazed at each other in fear and disbelief. This was a blow we had never anticipated and could not possibly comprehend. This could not be happening!

But it was, and it would mean that for the next six years we would not be in class together. My mother later explained that perhaps the teachers separated us because we were too attached. Our mothers had accepted the split without complaint (back then, parents basically went along with what the teachers expected). My mom assured me that Beth and I could still be friends, and she was correct. And in fact, it’s quite possible that had we been in the same classroom, we would have been competitive over such things as grades or boys (we were both smart, both pretty enough, and both on the shy side, except when we were together). Still, it was painful as well as inconvenient, and all through grade school, whenever we spied one another across the hall or at an assembly, we would mouth the word “Wait!” which meant, “Wait for me after school in our designated spot and we will walk home together, as always.”

Whatever their reasoning, but especially if it was to tear us apart so that we would make other friends—the result was that we stuck to each other from then on. We shared our histories, our families, our popsicles and packs of bubble gum, our dolls, our clothes, our hopes and disappointments, our tears, our laughter and most if not all of our secrets (we even shared our diaries). Had we been actual sisters, I doubt that we could have been closer or known more about one another’s interior and exterior lives. 

And there was nothing—save death, which took Beth away last month—that could have ever separated us. 

So there.