Friends

Above: Zach and his friend and clasmate Angelo.

I can still remember my first friend, his name was Brian and he was the child of my parents best friends. When my mom and dad were still married, Brian used to come over my house and I would go over his and we would have fun adventures, go places, argue like brothers and just be kids together. I'll never forget that first friendship and it started around the same age Zach is now, five.

Above: A happy Zachary.

Above: Angelo gives a big smile while eating his ice cream.

Above: Zach and Angelo playing arcade games.

Above: I love this photo! HA!

Zach is making a similar friendship with one of his classmates, Angelo. Carrie took Zach and Angelo to Santa Cruz for a fun weekend of fun, ice cream, the beach and carnival rides. I wish I could have been there, it looked like a blast from the photos. Even though I wasn't there I could see the fun the two were having in the photos. Many of us endure these types of friendships early on in life and some of them last a lifetime.

I always wonder if I would have still been friends with Brian. We would see each other quite often, mostly on the weekends - it was less often after my parents divorced. I would stay overnight at his house and we loved to ride our bikes around his neighborhood. I will never forget the large hill we would race up and down. We were both the same age and one day when we were eight years old, we were riding out bikes down the hill, we would fly down the hill and around the corner really fast and then go around the block to arrive back at the top of the hill.

Above: Me at eight years old.

I remember that day vividly, I had decided to go down the hill first and I flew down the hill and around the corner and back to the top of the hill. I waited for a while at the top of the hill and Brian never showed up. Usually he was only a few minutes behind me, but for some reason it was taking him a while to meet me at the top of the hill. I drove down the hill to see if I could find him, when I turned the corner I saw a large truck stopped in the middle of the road and saw Brian's bike smashed in front of the truck and then I saw Brian's lifeless body on the ground.

I'll never forget that memory for as long as I live. I raced to his parents house to get his parents and that was the end. I never saw Brian again, he was killed by the head on impact off the truck. It was horrible and I remember his parents were hysterical. I never saw them again after that. I always wondered if it would have been me that got hit by that truck if I had gone down that hill when Brian did. Who knows.

After Brian's death, I had a hard time making friends and keeping them for one reason or another. It wasn't until I was 30 that I started to make genuine, real, lifelong friendships again. I still have a hard time when friends leave and move away. I almost ignore it because I hate the goodbyes.

Above: Zach and Angelo running on the beach without a care in the world. Beautiful photo. I wonder if Zach and Angelo wil be lifelong friends.