Susie

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round and the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on a carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came and go 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game.

Joni Mitchell

I grew up as an only child even though I wasn't.
My first friend was Susie who showed up at our front door one day with her little dog.
"Can your little girl come out and play?" She asked my mother.
My mother's over protective response -
"She's not allowed to play with dogs."
So Susie went home, dropped off her little dog and rang our bell again.
"Now can your little girl play?"
Susie had long, dark, thick, chestnut brown, curly hair.
As it turned out, she, too, was growing up as an only child even though she wasn't.
Susie was a year older than me and the sister of a friend of my brother's.
Both Susie and I had siblings eighteen or so years older than us.
Mother let Susie in and from that day on, I had a sister. I was three and she was four.

My father called her "Sue Sue". I never knew why.
Her mother called her Susan and My Angel.
Susie's house was only 8 houses down from mine on Resh Street.
I lived on the cul de sac across Sycamore - a busy street that, like not being allowed to play with dogs, I was not allowed to cross alone.
Susie taught me how to roller skate, ice skate, and ride a bike.
My father taught Susie how to swim.

We would trade off spending the night at each other's houses.
It seemed every time I ate over for dinner, Susie's mother fixed liver.
I hated liver.
My favorite thing she fixed was date nut loaf.
Susie had plum trees and a tether ball in her back yard. I loved the plums but I was always afraid of getting hit in the face by the tether ball. Susie would hit it so hard it would wrap around the pole. I mostly ducked.

Susie's father would sit outside the back door of their house and listen to the ball game on his transistor radio.

I was always scared of Susie's dog. Sometimes I would climb up on top of their couch and the dog would chase me.
Susie's bedroom furniture was antique. She had twin beds high off the ground. I like sleeping on them.
Susie's father would give us Dentine gum and red licorice when we rode in the back of my parent's station wagon down to San Clemente where we had a mobile home on the beach.
On the weekends we'd drive down to Capistrano Shores on Friday nights. We arrived in time for Get Smart and the Jackie Gleason show. My mother would fix us hot cocoa in plastic mugs and we'd sit at the kitchen table drinking it before bed.

Susie didn't like the dip. Right out from the edge of the sand was a ditch you'd have to cross when going into the ocean before reaching the sandbar.

Growing up, Susie and I had many adventures in our neighborhood. We wore cords and wallabies, parted our hair down the middle and wore frosted lipstick, a pointy comb tucked into the back pocket of our cords.
We played tennis at Anaheim High School and rode our bikes down town where we got in trouble because we visited the elevator boy at the SQR store. We must have been gone too long because my mother walked into the SQR store and yelled my name at the top of her lungs right through the store.

Susie & I got in trouble a fair amount. We broke our neighbor's window throwing rocks over the fence.
We played ding dong ditch and Mrs. Crog yelled at us.
And we destroyed my plastic playhouse in the back yard piling rocks on its roof.
We got sent home from the Bruce's house because I spelled the "F-word" and Robert's mother over heard me.

We were surrounded by tough girls on Resh. Cindy lived next door to Susie. She was older than us. A pretty blonde, Cindy's father owned a local market where we'd go to buy candy. Cindy told us where baby's came from, that there was no Santa and what marijuana was.
Cindy ended up pregnant.

Susie and I walked the alleys in the neighborhood looking for what we thought were marijuana butts. I don't know why.
Peggy Lamarenel lived for a while on my cul de sac. A red head, she came from an alcoholic family. She was the meanest girl I'd ever met.
And Theresa Francis beat me up.
Susie rescued me.
I was walking home one day from St. Boniface and Theresa decided to bully me and then kicked me very hard in the thigh.
Theresa was adopted. So were her 2 siblings. Her mother looked emaciated all the time and her older sister taught me how to play the guitar.
Eventually Theresa and I became friends.
I don't know why she kicked me that day.

One Christmas, Susie and I both got guitars. I have a picture of us in front of our Christmas tree with them strapped across our bodies. A few minutes after that picture was taken, Susie and I went to her house with the guitars and we smashed into each other on her porch and put a hole in the side of one of them. I think mine but I can't remember.

One time I was babysitting my nephews who lived across the street from Susie and all the kids in the neighborhood were over playing hide and seek. I climbed up into the avocado tree and fell out, breaking my arm. My parents were dancing at The Palms Restaurant so I ended up calling Theresa Francis' mother who determined that my arm was broken.
Eventually my parents came home and I ended up with a cast on my arm for the whole summer.

On Susie's side of the street from Sycamore lived Mrs. Shea, Mrs. Beltz, Mrs. Rickle, The Caracozzes and the Beninatas - I don't know how to spell their names - and Mr. and Mrs. Davis. Their house was always dark inside. On the other side of Susie lived Mrs. Drennin. On our cul de sac lived the Crogs, and the Mrs. Coney. Mr. Croney died from hitting his head on the freezer door.
Mother often repeated that story when yelling at me to close the freezer.
She also would yell at me if I kept a drawer open. Did I want to end up on crutches "like Sue Frenzil who was crippled from having fallen over an open drawer?"

Susie liked Mark Brunet. Joe Waldman like me. Joe would ride his bike over to my house and hit the white brick side with his tire and my mother would yell at him.

Mother was always yelling at somebody.

Susie was a year ahead of me at St. Boniface. All the boys were crazy about Susie.

We traveled to Europe one time with my parents and the Kavanaghs. Susie's suitcase exploded.
She carried my father's Polaroid camera everywhere.
We both had a crush on a cute elevator boy in Biarritz. He liked Susie.

In Las Vegas, Susie always won more tokens than me at Circus Circus.
I would get mad.

Susie's mother loved Las Vegas. We went with her on several trips. We'd lay out by the pool and rub baby oil on our bodies.

Susie's mother pierced her ears with a potato in her kitchen. She always soaked her earrings in alcohol.

Susie loved Elvis Presley. We would go to the Fox Anaheim every Saturday and see a new Elvis movie.

Susie's sister lived way out in Yorba Linda. In the country. One time, we rode our bikes all the way down La Palma Avenue to her house. Whenever we spent the night, we slept in the blue room "out at Kathy's."

Susie rode horses and drove a Gremlin.
She worked at Del Taco and went to Connelly. We got drunk, snuck cigarettes, and had boyfriends. We came of age in the 70's and somehow made it through unscathed.
We grew up, got married, and had children. Susie was pregnant with her eldest daughter, Briana, at my wedding.

Where does the time go? It seems only yesterday we were kids riding our bikes, helmetless, wind in our hair, around the streets of Anaheim .
Wasn't it just yesterday
my mother was serving us cokes and processed smoked turkey sandwiches on white bread by the pool at 509,
her unmistakeable voice yelling my name down the street or down the hallway of our house?
Wasn't it just yesterday Susie's mother was baking in her kitchen, the aroma and the sound of her father's transistor wafting from 323?

And now, Susie is a grandmother!

And the seasons, they go 'round and 'round.