When a Note About a Classmate's Ernie Doll Held Us Together

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The idea of a single note or card I've kept due to their significance?  It's a little silly...

It's silly if you know me.  If you know that I keep every note.  Because every time someone thinks of me, and gives that actual breadth and space on paper...(or these days...on a white board or a Google Doc...) that matters to me.

Tara and I have been exchanging notes and letters to each other for years.  Ever since we could hold pencils.  Ever since I could first print the words: To Tara: I Love You, there have been notes.  We even came up with a secret code in sixth grade, and we wrote all of our letters to each other in that code for the entire year.

We have 3-ring binders full of letters.  Ziploc baggies full of lunch notes I sent to work with Tara.  I save pictures of the notes she writes me on the white board that I particularly love. 

But there is one note that stands out when I think of this notion.  One note that held us together at a time when we desperately needed it.

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In high school, Tara and I kept in touch via passing notes in the hall when we saw each other.  (Only by the end of our senior year did a few well-off classmates have cell phones - the kind that solely called.  There was no texting.)  So, we did our in-person passing of the note thing.  Particularly in junior year, when Tara and I had the same teacher in back-to-back hours.  

We'd say "hey," to each other.  But she'd also put a note in my hand and it was like subtext.  We exchanged greetings but the notes had the substance - at least, what substance we could safely share. (I wrote less often, and usually handed mine off to her once we were home.)

On the Tuesday before winter break, Tara handed me this.

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[Image: The top right corner of notebook paper.  The date: 12-16-97 can be seen in blue ink]

The note started out like they all did.  Casually:

"Geez I haven't written a note to you in so long...but it's not like I never see you!"

We had no way of knowing that in 48 hours, everything would change.  And that once it did?  Our dynamic would change, too.

I shared in our review of The Fosters 4x13 "Cruel and Unusual:

I was told not to talk about school with [Tara] (because she was worried about having not been able to finish classwork, and thinking her teacher would be mad at her.)  But at 16, our whole lives were focused on school.  We did not have big social lives so most of our interaction with friends was at school.  To have such a huge limit placed on what we could discuss was beyond difficult.  Especially because she knew I wasn’t being honest with her.  She could always tell.  And it bugged her.  (Rightly so!)  

Prior to this, we told each other absolutely everything, so when she was recovering in the hospital, to have to resort to sanitized half-truths, when I really wanted to say sometimes: “You know what?  This friend really sucks right now,” was tough...

It was this note, though, that helped us cope.  

At a time when home was always stressful (to put it mildly) and now discussing school was off-limits, too.  But this note was of the lighthearted type.  In French, Tara's class had been assigned to write about a childhood toy.

One classmate memorably shared about his Ernie doll and how sad he was when it got lost in some bushes, and how much he loved this toy as a child.

Tara memorialized these sweet few sentences (in their original French - and then - since I took Spanish - she translated them to English.)

I kept it in the front pocket of my backpack, which was always on the back of my wheelchair.  I took my wheelchair to the hospital to visit Tara each day of winter break.

When she was not sleeping, or doing therapy, she asked:

"What about [Classmate's] Ernie doll?" 

And I read the passage to her.  (The English passage, as I could not pronounce the French.)

I could quote parts of the note by memory, which was good, because there was never a time Tara didn't want to hear about the Ernie doll...and there was never a time I didn't want to tell her.

When I left the hospital at nights, I read the note, and reread it, taking as much comfort in it - in a classmate's safe memory of a childhood toy - and more?  Of the joy it brought my sister when she told the story...and later...when she heard it.

There was a time I was convinced I had lost the note.  And it devastated me.  But we have since collected every single one and saved them in a scrapbook.

So that, even though our classmate's Ernie doll remains lost, the documentation of our classmate's love for his favorite toy?  The safety, and the way to connect to each other?

That remains.

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Has a note or card from someone you love helped see you through a difficult time?  Let me know in the comments.

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