A childhood friend – we lived in the same building for a few years – reached out to me about 10 years ago and we met up while she was in town. Her family had moved cross-country back when that used to be a much more definitive break for kids who were friends, but the wonders of the internet meant that a relative of mine dying came across her mom’s social media, who told her, and she decided it was time to try to find me after many decades.
She became a nurse because of me. She taught her daughter to stand up for others, and how to report to a responsible adult if she saw or suspected abuse, because of me.
She described a memory, seared in her brain, of crouching in the dark in our front hall closet, so scared, unable to move, and not knowing what to do. She said she decided then and there that she would grow up to be the kind of person who is able to help in such situations.
Her father, it turns out, was such a person, although back in those days, a man from another family really couldn’t do much. So what he did was get me away as much as possible, under the guise of doing things with his daughter. I went to swimming classes with her for years, for example, paid for by him. Unfortunately, by the time she got back in touch with me he had died, so I never got to thank him.
