I think I was twelve years old when I found out I had a second cousin that was the same age. She lived in Oklahoma, and I lived in California. Our grandmas were sisters, and her family was coming for vacation. I remember when they pulled up in their station wagon. We saw the sites of San Diego with them, and she and I clicked right away. From that day on we vowed to write to each other forever, and we kept our promise. Over the years, we shared our lives through letters and pictures—and I’m talking handwritten letters, no email back then. We would share beauty secrets and makeup tips, we shared school problems and boyfriend ups and downs ... later we would cry with each other in those letters as if we were right there, face-to-face. Neither one of our families had a lot of money so we seldom talked on the phone, but when we did, we would take turns calling and kept it short.
There wasn’t anything about her I didn’t know nor she me. I remember when she met her husband, I remember the wedding—although I wasn’t there in body, I was there in spirit. I remember when they tried desperately to have a baby, and every month she would call when she would get her period, that conversation always started with tears but would end in our laughs. We always knew the right things to say to lift each other’s spirits, and although her heart was breaking she would always pick herself up, dust off, and say, “There’s always next month.”
I sure looked up to her, in my eyes she had it all: a loving husband, a home, a great family; they lived in a small town, she was popular in high school, and she was beautiful and funny. She was everything I wasn’t. I wonder if she knew way back then that she was my hero.
Then the word came that they couldn’t have babies. But Lisa didn’t fall into a dark depression, she said, “Okay we’ll adopt.” I still have the pictures they took to send to the adoption agencies and lawyers, I would tease her asking if she was holding that fence up in those pictures. Adoption didn’t happen overnight, in fact. it didn’t happen for a long time. She never gave up hope. If ever someone deserved to have their dreams fulfilled; it was Lisa.
