Liz & Kara

During the summer between 5^th and 6^th grade my parents moved us 8-10 miles to be closer to my father’s work which forced a change schools for me. It didn’t take long for me to meet Liz and establish a close friend that I did everything with. Her parents had a small farm and we spent many hours with her brother hanging out in their barn, tormenting the animals (yes you can ride a pig, it’s not real happy about you doing it, but it can be done), riding their Shetland ponies, hanging out in the hay loft and doing chores. We had many a sleep over and if I was not at her house, she was at mine.

The following year the two of us headed off to junior high together. We stayed best friends during 7^th grade, but we mixed it up with new friends and mix of new activities that came with being out of elementary school. One of those new friends we made that year was Kara, she was the girl that everyone wanted to know, especially the boys.  She was very beautiful, long silky dark brown hair, rich brown eyes, and she had a very sweet spirit about her.  I questioned why she was friends with us we were just a couple of average girls in school and she was one of the popular girls.  But that didn’t seem to matter to Kara, we didn’t spend allot of time together, but enough to consider her a friend.  We sometimes had lunch together, and we chatted during open time in classes, she was just an over all nice girl who happened to have good looks and popularity on her side.

Liz and I had two really great years together before my family made the choice to move to Seattle, and her family bought a new farm across town which meant she was changing schools too, but our friendship didn’t end there. During the next couple of years every time my family came back to Oregon for a holiday or weekend visits or I would come and spend summers with my grandmother, I would managed to stay at least one night at Liz’s and we would fall right back into step as if we had never been apart. We would get to call each other from time to time when our parent would allow us to make a long distance phone call, and we wrote many, many letters over that time keeping up on all the news of who was dating who, and all the important stuff.

Even after I got married I would find time to come and hang out with Liz on our trips down to see the family.  We would still disappear off to her room, sit on the bed and talk for hours.  I told her about the abortion and all the details around it. She was the closest person I had, the one who would not judge me for what I had done.

A couple of years after I was married I got a letter from Liz while she was in college, and she had been with a guy and had ended up pregnant. She knew I had had my abortion and seemed to be okay, so she decided that an abortion was going to be her solution too. He was not a guy she could see herself with long term, nor did she want to deal with being a single mom, or have to deal with telling her parents, so off to the clinic she went.

The clinic she went to was different than what I had experienced, and it was to cause of her crossing paths with Kara again. After my procedure I was released to go home with little regard to how I was doing, Liz was put in a room with other women who also just had the procedure, to recover. There was a row of beds along the wall where there were left to get their strength back before leaving the clinic. It was there in that recovery room that she saw Kara.  She was still beautiful, but she had grown hard, her sweetness had been taken away from her. The two old classmates had a chance to chat a little as they rested, a bit of catching up on where their lives had taken them, but nothing to serious, they both knew why they were there at that clinic which told enough of a story in itself. At one point the doctor came in to the recovery room to talk with Kara (so much for privacy rights back then). The doctor proceeded to tell Kara that because she so many abortions that if she had another, she would never have children. After the doctor left little was said between the two.

It was hard to believe what I was hearing; beautiful, popular Kara was using abortion as a birth control.  That was very sad news. They didn’t exchange info that day, they didn’t stay in contact, and they chose to not remember that day as the day they ran back into each other.

Liz went on to complete her classes at college, marry a great guy and have two wonderful children.  We stayed in contact for many years while our children were growing up, comparing notes and tracking achievements with our kids. But as the years passed each letter and phone call became further and further apart. I ran into her parents in Office Depot a year ago and was able to get a good phone number for her and gave her a call. As crazy as it was to run into her parents that day she was just across town at her husbands soccer game, so I headed for the field and had the chance to spend over an hour with her.  Some things never change; we fell right back into step as if we were 13 years old again talking laughing and crying over where our lives had gone. Her grown children stopped by to see some of the game while we visited and I had the chance to see them and her husband which was nice too. But we have changed, we made plans to get together a few weeks after that which never paned out.  I’ve sent a few emails her way and have gotten a couple text messages from her, but we have moved on with our families and new friends.  Maybe one of these days we’ll find the time to get together and really catch up.

Over all these years we never talked about how our abortions affected us. It became something that was not talked about; there were more important things in life to dwell on over the years. So now I question as I write these words, how is she doing? I think it’s time to find my beloved old friend and check in.