He was just a little boy when his family moved next door, maybe six or seven years old.

A cute little boy but with very sad eyes.

He was loud and sometimes obnoxious like little boys can be but there was a sweetness about him too, a gentleness and as I mentioned..…a sadness.

It was an amazing neighborhood for kids to grow up in.

A chunk of land a bit off the beaten path with a small subdivision full of young middle-class families.
I don’t think there were even 200 houses but every house had kids and everybody knew everybody and the kids all went to school together.
It was an idyllic place for kids to grow up and still a safe time.
There was no place to go but the subdivision or the playground so all the kids were able to run free.
They could hop on their bikes and be gone for hours, no cell phones, no worries.

The school, by the way was right behind our house.

It wasn’t long before the little boy next door found a friendship with my daughters.

He was often at our house playing with them.

Inside was a haven for kids and at one time or another most of them were down the basement where it was all about the kids; every game imaginable and the biggie of the time…..Pong.

Because I had all daughters, most everything was geared at females; a treasure chest with my prom dresses, old jewelry, shoes, make-up, and dolls…..probably 16,000 dolls!
I believe if it was on the shelves of Toys R Us, it was also in our basement.

The little boy next door was always nearby.
He was a sweet child and growing up to be a gentle, polite kid.
He never just came in to play with the girls, he often found me to just talk about something, anything….tell me about the cookies he’d made and I could see that he admired my husband from afar.

But there was also an annoying side of him.
There was a 6-foot wooden fence between his house and ours.
He’d climb that fence, sit at the top and just watch the goings-on of our parties and get-togethers.
I couldn’t yell at him to get off the fence and quit staring…..it was his fence too!
But he didn’t just sit up there quietly, he wanted to be noticed and so, he’d yell out the time or what the weather was gonna be for that day and the following or anything, just so we’d see him.

Sometimes I’d see him watching and smiling like in an imaginary way, he was down off that fence and in the yard just being one of us and enjoying everyone.
Those times struck me as sad.

But huge irritation was bedtime…..he didn’t have one and my girls did.
Their bedrooms were at the back of the house looking out at the little boy on the fence.
Often when they should have been sleeping, they were instead laughing and talking out the window with the little boy on the fence.

The years zipped by, the kids grew and the friendship with the boy next door remained.

He had one close boy friend in the neighborhood but other than that he was a loner and either in our house or on the fence.

He was a misfit in his family, nothing like his older brother or older and younger sisters.
I saw little interaction between him and his parents.

He was a neat, clean kid and always concerned about his appearance.
One time he knocked on our door and very embarassed asked if he could take a shower at our house because they had no hot water.
He was that kind of kid and it was that kind of life for him.

More than it seemed my own girls were doing, he listened to me.
When he asked about things and I tried to explain, I could see him holding tight to my words.

Time marched on, the kids all grew in different directions but he remained close.

Once a neighbor lady noticed him hanging with one of my girls, she commented to me that he was gay……said she could “smell them” a mile away.
Until that moment, I can honestly say, I never gave his sexuality a thought, they were all still just kids and in truth, I didn’t care.
I was raising teenagers, working and running a household.
There was no spot in my head to think about his sexuality and it really made no difference to me.
He was already in my heart for who he was not who he preferred.

We moved to California while he was in high school.
He stood on the curb with the saddest face ever as we pulled away, honked and waved on that last day.

He and my girls kept in touch with now and then phone calls.

The day after he graduated from high school, he joined the Navy, a direct influence of my husband at the time who had also been in the Navy.

He married grade school sweetheart but, sadly like many it ended in divorce.

I followed his life through the phone calls he had with my girls.

After his discharge from the Navy, he moved to Florida, changed his name, and suffered a few cosequences of the wild life he was living.
He fell in and out of love while searching for that once special person.

A huge gap of years interrupted our closeness.
No one heard from him and to be fair, he didn’t hear from us either.
I guess we were all busy living our lives.
He’d cross my mind, I’d think about him, hope he was well and then let it go.

A few years ago, one of my girls received a call.
He must have been doing some nostalgic thinking of once-upon-a-time and called her to catch up.
She was thrilled to hear from him and of course told her other sisters and me about their conversation.
This made us all want to get in on this reunion.
The other girls began calling and talking to him.
I sent him a Happy Birthday bouquet and of course he called.

After so many years, I would have recognized his voice in a heartbeat and it was a happy time talking and catching up with him.

The next thing he did was book a flight and come to California for a visit.

It was a grand reunion.

The little boy who climbed up on that fence when he was 6 or 7 years old until he was in high school, was now a young man and as I always knew he would, he turned out pretty damn good.

Most of his time was laughing and remembering with my girls but we did share some alone time.

I listened to him talk. I paid attention as he told me about his life-journey so far…..the lessons he’d learned, the happiness and the sadness, his hopes and dreams for a future and someone to share it with.

He elaborated on his childhood, things I didn’t know.
How he hated high school and the way the kids treated him.
It left him scarred…..it was bullying just like today but for some reason we thought it was kinda normal.
We called it teasing…..a much more benign word than BULLYING!
I felt sad, I didn’t know and I wasn’t there to help him through it.

But with every negative experience, he pulled something good from it and he grew.

I’m proud of this young man.
Yep, he walks his own path different than many, more difficult but he holds his head high now, he doesn’t hide who he is.

As I learned with ACM, my most memorable character ever, if we don’t take the time to delve into who people really are, beyond surface, we take the chance of never knowing some very wonderful people.

I wish you all someone wonderful and different in your lives.