Before going to bed at night after a long day’s hike, bike, or kayak, we’d line the little friends up next to a candle like a religious shrine to watch over us. By mid-trip, they’d earned semi-celebrity status as other people on our trip wanted their photos taken with the little friends say, under the waterfall in the rainforest hiking up to Fox Glacier or in a meadow of wild flowers near Okarito.
In Fiji, we added “Turd-o” a brown wooden turtle. On travels we weren’t together on, the first thing we’d ask the other upon return wasn’t “how was the trip,” but instead, “did you find any little friends?”
It was a tall order to qualify as a little friend. A little friend had to be, well, little, or under three inches more precisely, and in proportion to the other friends. You couldn’t have a six-inch long lizard, say, from Baja no matter how cute, or a troll in lederhosen from Germany with hair that towered over Kiwi, it just wouldn’t work.
I kept a photo of all the little friends sitting in the snow in Vail in a frame Vic got me in seaside village of Punakaiki in New Zealand. The little friends had been part of a Valentine gift surprise in Vail standing in formation inside chocolate kisses that formed a heart with two necklaces wrapped in the center.
The little friends had conversations with each other the way couples talk through pets when they can’t openly display their feelings for each other. “Does Liddo Lamb miss Kiwi?” Vic would ask.
“Yes, she’s been baaa-aahing herself to sleep every night putting little Xs on her sheep herder calendar wondering when she’s going to see him again,” I’d reply.
The relaxation of the Nordic Princess massage quickly vanished when I returned to my room and noticed the little friends absent from the bed tray. The maids had obviously come for the bed turndown service. The bedspread was folded and set aside, sheets turned down with chocolates on the pillow and the bedside welcome tray exactly as I’d left it except for the little friends. I looked under the bed, around the perimeter of the dresser, or anyplace a little three-inch friend could have rolled or leapt off. Nothing.
