Lisa the Horse

I got this for Christmas this year from my father. It was my favorite present.

I love how it's not a horse for me. It is me. As a horse. Like, if I ever wondered what I might look like as a horse, now I know.

And actually, it's very me. I have long eyelashes and favor pink lip gloss. And would always rather be smiling in the sunshine, enjoying the flowers.

This fall my parent's basement flooded, or at least part of it did. And so they were going through the closet rescuing things and my dad came across this drawing. Lisa the Horse. So he took it and framed it for me.

I hadn't seen it in years and years. Maude drew this for me when we were kids - probably six or seven. She sent it while we were living in Bangladesh.

Long ago we realized that our parents - her mother and my father, in particular, we suspect - decided we were going to be friends. My dad would insert Maude into my bedtime stories. We were always narrowly escaping from the witches together. And I can just hear her mom, with her southern accent saying, "Maudie, why don't you draw something nice for your friend Lisa?"

No matter that we lived in separate countries and hadn't seen each other since we were three.

So eventually we became real friends, and still are, to this day. For all the moving moving moving we did, I have an incredibly close friend that I have known since I was born. We're more like siblings, really.

Our mothers are dear friends. I hope our kids are one day as well.

In fact, I envision us doing the same kinds of things. They'll be coaxed into friendship, years down the road. They'll be well into adulthood before they realize we engineered it.

Heh.