The Plan

The day I moved in to my family's home in Oswego, I made my first new friend. It rained most of the drive back from my grandparents' house, and I'm pretty sure Grandpa missed the turn to the subdivision and had to double back. But we made it, and although it likely was muggy and sloshy, my parents let me out back to play on my swing set. I mean, it was the entire reason they bought the place. I didn't want to wait another second to climb into the fort or learn to flip on the hanging rings. Caroline was too young to play without mom or dad watching her (she was 2ish at that point), so I had it to myself for the time being.

And then Michael showed up. He was 5, his hair was short, and he squatted down in front of one of my blue swings, poking at the muddy hole beneath it with a stick. He and the boy who used to live there made it. They were best friends, and the boy was going to come back and visit him soon. I didn't give two hoots about this old boy neighbor, but I decided Michael seemed nice enough, so I picked up a stick and poked at the muddy mess with him.

What started out as catching frogs or constructing bridges here or there grew into a daily ritual. Michael would wake up, eat breakfast, and head outside to shoot hoops. (His first two initials were MJ -- Michael Jordan -- or so he led me to believe.) I woke up to the thumping of the basketball against the cement driveway or the occasional clang against the metal rim, and rushed out to join him. And that's pretty much how it went for the next six or seven years.

One day, he and I hatched a long-term, super serious plan. (I call it super serious because I'm fairly certain we pinky swore on it, but I was a liberal pinky swearer, so I could be wrong.) When we grew up, we decided we'd get rich, buy our parents retirement villas in Florida or Arizona, and move into our childhood homes. I'd take my house, Michael would live next door, and we'd boot out the neighbors we didn't like so my sister and his brother could live near us. (Fun fact: Michael also has two younger sisters. One of them did not exist when we made this plan, and the other, if she did exist, was too young to pencil in. My guess is he wasn't too fond of his sister when she was a baby. But he was a kid; could you blame him?) We'd fill in the rest of the houses with our favorite neighbor friends (who, I presume, also got rich), and our kids would be friends with their kids, and we'd all grow old together.

Pretty nice, right?

As an adult, I acknowledge the odds of this plan panning out are slim to none. I can safely say we are not rich yet, and I now live whopping two to four states away, depending which way you drive down. Still, it gives me comfort to think about our pact on the nights when I don't quite know where my life was going, and I hope that Michael at least remembers it, if not laughs about it, from time to time.

I'm replaying that little moment in my mind right now (and I know I'm burying the lead here) because I found out today that my mother sold my childhood home. I'm a little pissed, a little understanding, and incredibly sad. Adult me knows it's a logical move. I live out of state, my sister's in college, and it's a big house for one person and an old golden retriever. So I get it. But I also get that I'm entitled to my emotions, so I'm going to continue being sad for a while and see where that takes me.

And I still see my room circa 1998, lined with teddy bear wallpaper that my sister tore. I can open my closet and look at the shelves piled high with Lisa Frank crafts and multiplayer board games. I know where I kept the tub of Legos and how I organized my books (never by author; always by genre). If I peek around the corner, I can watch Caroline play Barbies or hear the steady clicking of the mouse as my dad channels the pros while playing a virtual PGA tour.

And I blink. And it's gone. And I miss it.

Maybe fulfilling the plan wasn't in the cards for us. We were too young when we pinky promised. Michael never became a basketball star. And I somehow decided the best way to get rich was to start a career in a field that has been, for all intents and purposes, dying for the past eight years. We won't make it back to our little row of houses, but I'm going to hold onto the hope that maybe, one day, our great-great-grandkids will all end up on the same cul-de-sac, poking around in the mud, promising each other that they'll stick around for a while.