Stacie

I met Stacie the first day of third grade. She was the new girl, so blond and pale. She looked so scared and unsure, even to my innocent third grade eyes. Her Dad was the new band director for the school. I took the seat beside her, and we became fast friends. I loved my friend with the fierce, pure love that only young best friends can. We were inseparable.

Stacie and I were closer than even my sister and I were. See Stacie wasn’t privy to my secrets and my sister was. Stacie was the NORMAL part of my life. She wasn’t around when my mother was a raving lunatic or when my sister was abusing me. I never wanted Stacie to see me as different and I don’t think she ever did.

Stacie was normal in every way her parents weren’t crazy, and she had an adorable little bothersome brother. She got to have sleepovers and parties. She got to sleep through the night with out her mother waking her up … getting her up to find a comb that was missing…. She got to have a dog… that stayed and didn’t “run off”.

Stacie’s mom worked for the First Baptist Church in out little town and as luck would have it this church was on my block. We spent many happy hours playing in that dark church playing the pianos, playing school, and roller-skating downs the glossy hallways. I was happiest when I was with her

At the end of 5th grade her family announced that they were moving to Alaska to be missionaries. The July after 5th grade the normal, constant part of my life left. I was to only see her once more. We wrote for a while but as young kids do we let it slide and trickle to nothing. I was so devastated at the loss of Stacie that it was a long time before I let anyone get that close again.

For years I thought of Stacie and wondered about her. I dreamed about her. It was always about her coming back to our town and things being the way they were. I was a teenage still dreaming about stuff that happened at 9. I would wake up sad, and heartbroken.

The dreams continued along the same line and frequency until I was grown and had a child. Then started to notice that in the dreams Stacie was growing up… she was not my age yet but she was gaining. She finally reached adulthood but they were still about rekindling friendship lost. Stacie got married, got a career of some sort and had children … well at least in my dreams. The dreams got less frequent.

The dreams rarely come at all now. Stacie has finished her job… the dreams were never about Stacie. The dreams were about me and how I was dealing with the very hurt child inside me. As I learned to accept and deal with how things were for me as a child Stacie was needed less and less and she was allowed to grow up and leave me.

I have no idea where Stacie is now or what her life is like, but I do hope that she is happy and healthy and richly blessed. She has no way of knowing that she was a lifeline to a sad little girl. She has no idea that she helped me long after she left.

So to Stacie where ever you are…. Thank you.