As a child growing up as part of a military family, I left my school and friends behind every three years or so, setting up shop each time in some new state or country to make an entirely new set of friends. It rarely bothered me much (though the move after fourth grade was incredibly difficult for me), and I learned quickly that homes were temporary and new friends plentiful. I sometimes wonder if that’s shaped my approach to friendships over the years—for better and for worse—to make me more adaptive, in some ways, to loss.
I can remember the people I’ve left behind over the years: the kid with the thick glasses in kindergarten in Rome, NY; Gina, the girl next door when I was in first grade there; Bunty, Teddy, Mike, and Greg from Newark, OH; Wellington Chang(!) and Yusuke from Fairfax, VA; the various Mikes and Jerries from Oklahoma (and a girl whose name I have forgotten who confessed her love for me the day I left, to my dismay); a number of folks from my high school (many of whom were transient themselves); and my many friends (and groups of friends) from college. Their faces are clear to me, even if my youngest friendships feel more abstract than my teenaged ones.
If I were to write a Moving Book, the person moving would be me, over and over again. I’d list the schools and parks and teams and teachers I left behind as I went. I never thought to write it all down; it’s just in my head, my field of view changing gradually, with a few kids holding space in the shadows each time.
It’s strange to see the opposite happening for Kina. It sounds odd and self-centered, but it never occurred to me that my leaving would result in somebody else being left. While she doesn’t seem particularly bothered to have watched these kids move on to other towns and cities, the departures have made enough of an impression on her that she remembers the name of each of her friends who have gone.
The other day, she cut out the tinest four sheets of paper and folded them into this book, then quietly sat and wrote the names of her former classmates and friends on two of the adjacent pages so that she could bring it to school and write her classmate Blakely’s name in it on the day she was due to depart.
“Each page holds eleven names,” she told me. “When it gets to eleven names, I will turn the page.”
I think that’s how it felt to me as a child. A turning of pages. A little wistful, but a blank slate.
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