First Friends

Ring Around The Rosies
Pocketful of Posies
Ashes, Ashes
We All Fall Down.

As I watch Ana in her daycare playground, my mind wanders...

Forced to hop together in a school sack race, I reluctantly break my ice-barrier and befriend the double-pigtailed, pinafore-d little replica of myself who went by the name of Anitha, back in 2nd grade. Mother Superior was a terribly menacing figure to us both and we seemed to derive some security holding each others' hands while being led to the chapel every morning.

We became inseparable, so much so that our parents arranged to have the same rickshaw-man pick us up for school and drop us off in the evenings... I remember being quite protective of her and making sure we didn't get juicy canings on our palms or knuckles for annoying Sister Teresa, our class teacher...

I have no memory of friends earlier than Anitha... Oh, of course, I remember our neighbors down the street when I was 3 or 4 years old - kids my brother played with, but, they weren't really my close friends with whom I wanted to spend all my waking hours...

Snap! Cutting back to the present, Ana is still holding hands with Amelie and Paulina, while all three are going round and round gleefully squealing at the top of their lungs as only three-year-old girls can:
Ring Around The Rosies
Pocketful of Posies
Ashes, Ashes
We All Fall Down.

Want to see my Elmo panties?
Hey! Look at my Dora panties!
they squeal as they take turns lifting up their skirts and showing off their undies...

I am not sure she is going to remember Paulina and Amelie a few years down the road unless she sees them daily and goes to school with them, but, for now, the three are thick-as-thieves her teacher assures me, and are constantly making up stories for their imaginative play with each of them taking turns as the requisite fairy princess and twirling their skirts and jumping and squealing with inexplicable glee...