Imagine this. A hot summer day. A playground. Bikes parked on the grass, some knocked over, some still standing. The smell of dirt from the gravel bed on the playground mixes together with the metallic smell of the equipment. It makes you a bit queasy, but you don't care all that much because you're there with your best friends in the world, playing a fast-paced game of Grounders, doing your absolute best to stay quiet as one of them chases you with their eyes closed.
You run around, go on monkey bars without a second thought about the difficulty of the physical feat you're taking on — you just do it (it will be years before you know that that’s a Nike slogan). You keep going until your lungs feel as though they’ll fall out of your body, and as your friend catches up with you, you start begging them to take mercy on you and chase someone else — only for them to (inevitably) tag you anyway.
You jump on the ground, catch your breath, and get ready to be "it." You yell "1 to 10. Grounders!" You start walking on the gravel, the crunch beneath your feet, before strategically deciding who your target will be. You get on the equipment, ready to chase them, but you're moving slowly — your eyes are closed, after all. Then something magical happens: you hear someone's feet hit the gravel. You scream "GROUNDERS" as loud as you can.
By some stroke of luck, you say it before they get back on the equipment, and the title of "it" is transferred once again.
This is how I spent most of my childhood summers. But it eventually fizzled out. Bike rides became walks. Walks became drives. Playground hangouts became coffee chats.
But there is an essential feature that has stayed: the childhood friends with whom I grew up playing grounders are, appropriately, the very same people who now keep me grounded in a world that seems to be whirling around me at lightning speed. They are deeply meaningful to me because I know that I can count on them no matter what. Without notice or warning, I could call them, and they’ll answer, no questions asked. There is no need to explain the context of why I am the way I am or how something is affecting me, because they saw the context being made as we grew up. That is the advantage of being around people you grow with — they not only know your roots, but in many ways they are your roots.
There are few friendships that last the test of time, but I am of the opinion that the essential quality required for those that do remain for a marriage of shared experiences during a deeply formative time with a medley of kindness, understanding, and empathy. I have found that the ones who have remained in my life — the friends that feel more like family than anything else — are the ones with whom I had this most formative of experiences with: playing grounders in the middle of July, and they are the most unfailingly kind, understanding and empathetic people I have ever met.
Now in July, I fly home (instead of bike) and there is something painfully nostalgic about walking by playgrounds on which I can no longer play, along with an intense enviousness of the children that still get to. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, there is a wonderful security in knowing that since those days are passed, my friendships have solidified into something so concrete.
I am wholly and completely certain that my childhood friends, who have seen me go through every phase, just as I have seen them go through theirs, will always be there for me, just as I will be for them.
It is rare to have found this type of friendship — we may even call it sisterhood — in a world as big and wide as ours and for it to have lasted as long as it has. And though it may be naive, I am hopeful that in ten years I can say the same thing about the friends with whom I have formative experiences with now.