My Earliest Memory is from when I was 5, is that weird?

           May 2002 was when my parents packed up our lives in Eagle Mountain and moved my brothers and me to a house in Highland, Utah with an unfinished basement and no next door neighbors. This was definitely a shock to me because back in Eagle Mountain our entire neighborhood was full of houses and almost every single one of them had a kid close to my age I could play with. Here my closest neighbor was 3 lots away and they were an Empty-Nest married couple around the age of 40. The neighbors across the street(ish) had a son my age, but he was a brat, so I still felt like the only kid for miles besides my little brothers.

            In the summer months after we moved in I played with kids older and younger than me and with my little brothers and I had a lot of fun, but I still longed for a girl my age to move in. I watched as lot after lot sold and my street began rapidly filling with houses.

            One day, my mom and I sat on our front porch swinging in an old porch swing when we saw a moving truck pull into the driveway of the newest house. “Look,” my mom said, “Maybe a little friend for you is moving in.” I brushed her off, not wanting to get my hopes up because that had happened time and time again with the countless other houses surrounding mine, but on the inside my heart was bursting with excitement. I had a vision of me and a beautiful new beautiful friend playing games every day and telling each other all our secrets.

            My mom probably saw the excitement bursting through my eyes because I’ve never been too good at keeping my cool so she suggested we go see if we can help them with anything. On the way over I caught a glimpse of curly brown hair bobbing between the truck and the garage and it was all I could do to keep from running the rest of the way to her. I did have a rather large spring in my step though, and I beat my mom to the house by several moments. When I arrived I stood and watched the little girl walk outside carrying an orange cat that was bigger than she was. I stared at her-she had a moon shaped scar on her chin-and her and her cat stared back at me. I was so excited that I found myself loss for words. Her mom came over and asked me my name and as I stammered a response, my mom arrived and saved me by introducing me as her only daughter, Savanna.

            While our moms talked, I walked over to the girl, Ashley, and asked if she wanted to play. She responded saying that she would like that very much. We drew in the dirt that was her front yard and picked flowers and held our own fake wedding for the imaginary people that we had just made up. Our friendship came easy and though she was a year older than me in school we kept our bond for years because we were best friends and there was nothing that could change that. We were the same people, we believed all the same things, wore the same kind of clothes, and even had the same favorite color-orange.

            6 years after this first encounter, Ashley, my very best friend in the whole world moved to Florida. I cried all day when she left and sang the song “I Miss You” by Hannah Montana to myself all that night, because I felt like it accurately described my feelings.

            We still keep in contact, but we have both changed a lot. We are no longer the same people. She has an amazing voice and is going to college on some sort of preforming arts scholarship and I can’t carry a tune to save my life. I play second base, but she was born without hand-eye coordination. We both grew up and changed the way we see the world and discovered our own individual talents. But regardless of where we are or what we are doing, we will always have those childhood years that we spent together and meeting her will always be my earliest and most precious memory.