when I met Cindy Lou
We lived in a depressing apartment on Olympic Boulevard; a recent divorce put us there. I hated every second of it and longed to be back in “the house.” Soon, the house became a long-ago memory. I might walk by the backyard while playing in the alley and knew it was “technically” ours, but eventually I stopped looking in and convinced myself I no longer pined for it.
One day, a little girl, a year younger than me, moved into the apartment directly across from ours. Not even three steps away was the front door of the girl who became my new best friend. Her name was Cindy Lou Carlson. Not Jewish. Not Jewish was always a comfortable fit for me because I was half-and-half, as we used to say. I knocked on the door and offered up my friendship … and some Oreos.
depressing Olympic apt. my window, Cindy's window where bike is
To date, my most important friendships had been with imaginary friends — an elephant named Carfia, and Sherry, a “good, nice” red-headed mother. (My real mother was a redhead too.) They lived in trees near Roxbury Park, which unfortunately placed them across the huge, though not-so-busy in those days, Olympic Boulevard. There were a few times at age three — and younger — that my mother couldn’t find me, because I was across that big road talking to my friends in the tree. Once, I was spotted by a neighbor and when my mother retrieved me, she slapped some sense into me (a real hard slap, very scary). She insisted my friends were imaginary and didn’t live in that tree. I knew better. But I moved them into a safer spot, my bathtub. I loved them, but Cindy Lou was real, and Cindy Lou looked up to me and followed everything I did. And Cindy could accompany me to Roxbury Park where I would tell her in a forest of bushes and trees that we were being held hostage by savage Indians. My new best friend “saw” all that I could see in my imagination. This was a win-win relationship. Follow the leader (me) was the game we eternally played.
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