Left to Right: Me, age 7  –  Jeff a.k.a. “Sunshine”  –  Rory-the-Dauntless  –  La Mirada, California

My Real Memoir

Hello Sunshine

This is a tale of two best friends, one full of sunshine, one full of clouds.

We’d moved to La Mirada a month into my 2nd grade year. And while our shiny new suburb might be “America’s Most Completely Planned,” my life was anything but. My only friend was a tiger-striped tabby. True, I had a goofy sense of humor and a wild imagination, but I mostly used them to amuse myself. Anyone who met me would have pegged me as an introvert. But at age seven, something instantly turned me into an extrovert. That something was Jeffrey (nickname “Sunshine”) Ward.

La Pluma Elementary school was full of strangers. Until class-clown extraordinaire Jeff, who’d never met a stranger and assumed everyone else felt the same, said, “Let’s be best friends!”

Not only did Jeff wipe away the last remaining cobwebs of my former shyness, he became my new template for how to do school. Both for good (other kids loved my stories and antics!) and for evil (the teacher didn’t). I spent a lot of time in the “learning not to interrupt” corner, and under the teacher’s desk (that was a thing in those days).

With Jeff, I acquired a second family: Paul, his jazz-loving optometrist dad; Roberta “Bert,” his suburban-bohemian mom, who treated us as intellectual equals (which I loved); and Jeff’s older brother and younger sister. Sleepovers and adventures ensued!

Hello Cloudy

A short time later, I met a boy at the other end of the block–and mood spectrum. Rory was frequently mistaken for Jerry Mathers (Leave It to Beaver). But in many ways, he was the opposite of the Beaver and Jeff. He could have been nicknamed “Cloudy.” Rory was good-hearted, but shy and hesitant. When he became flustered, he’d sometimes stutter and then become even more flustered (I based the young hero B’frona in The Wishing Map on him). But there was something in him that filled in the other missing part of me and so, along with Jeff, he completed our fearsome threesome.

But Rory’s family was a different story. His stepfather Donald rarely smiled and mysteriously came and went. And his mother Pat, although young and pretty, seemed perpetually anxious to please her husband. When I slept over at Rory’s house, she’d tuck us in wearing a low-cut negligee (my first lesson in female anatomy), but it was for Donald, not us. Still, she was kind and patient–unlike Rory’s father. Rory often couldn’t come out to play because, like Cinderella, he was cleaning his half-sisters’ room (sweet girls and not to be blamed). Yet, for all his labors Rory rarely received any allowance. Only years later did I learn that he’d been horribly abused by the man he now calls “the Monster,” a serial adulterer and narcissist.

So Thank You…

…Jeff and Rory, for the sunshine and the clouds. Jeff, you freed the daylight in me. And Rory, you taught me how to endure the darkness (we still had a good time, didn’t we?) and never give up. By the way, I’m ashamed to admit that, for a time, I called Rory my “second” best friend–juvenile thoughtlessness at its worst. I had two best friends, and loved them equally…

And I still do.