When I was growing up my best friend and probably the closest I ever got to a little sister was my cousin Holly. Actually we are kinda second cousins, once removed, or something like that. But, if you are Italian, then you understand that is just as good as being first cousins. Actually, if you are Italian your parents best friends are your "aunt & uncle" and you don't find out until you are an adult that you are not actually related. Her parents are my God parents and my parents are hers. We spent just about every weekend, vacation and free moment together for our first five years of life. She is 6 months younger than me. We played and fought like sisters. As we got older our parents grew apart, but we stayed pretty close and still did a ton of stuff together. When we were about 13 or 14 our parents kinda stopped talking and there were other outside forces that also came between us. My family moved upstate. Her parents got divorced. There was another adult in our lives that when I look back manipulated me into thinking Holly was a bad person so I would be friends with her daughter instead. So much was out of our control. We just stopped talking. Over the years she has been on my mind. About 2 years ago I decided to look for her. I tracked her down enough to find out that she had gone to medical school and was doing a residency for OB/GYN at Boston Medical Center. But that is where it ended. I figured she must have got married and her name changed. I found another mutual friend from our childhood on face book and we made a deal that if either of us found her we would let the other know. Then a couple of weeks ago she found me! Turns out she is an OB/GYN in California. She has a 1 month old named after her grandfather, Benjamin. I have such wonderful memories of her grandparents. I was so happy to hear that Ben's name would be carried on. We spoke on the phone for an hour saying "remember when we did this.....". We decided that what is past is past and we were now adults and in control of our friendship. We are going to try to make plans to get together later this year. We have each driven our husbands crazy with old stories of all the fun we had together as children. I am so excited to get to know Holly all over again!
