libby

charleston, south carolina was where i made my first real friend.

when we moved there, my mom wanted me to take dance classes, which is ridiculous for a 5-year-old, but i suppose it was all part of her idea that i was going to be the perfect, dainty little daughter she always wanted. charleston has an airforce base, so a lot of the people that live there have come from all over the place and a lot of the other girls in my dance class were from military families. one of these girls was libby herbst. she was a tiny, elfish little girl with a round face and short, light brown hair with bangs straight across her forehead and freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and over the bridge of her nose. she giggled constantly and had the sweetest, most cheerful voice. we became friends immediately. neither of us was very good at dancing but we would stand next to each other in class and laugh at our many mistakes but try so hard to get it all right.

occasionally after dance class, we would go to the herbst's tiny house on the airforce base. libby had the most enormous collection of my little ponies that i had ever seen and i was so jealous. she had so many of them that she didn't really care about them. she would color on their faces with crayons, cut their brightly-colored manes with her little orange safety scissors, and leave them strewn all over the floor of her bedroom. i have always been incredibly organized and meticulous with everything. i mean...i organized my crayons in their box by color. so, to see all of the my little ponies being treated so carelessly absolutely horrified me. my little ponies were relatively expensive, so my parents only allowed me to have two. one of them was pale blue with a neon green and red mane and tail and the other was lavender and light pink. they were my prized posessions. when i went to libby's house and we went into her bedroom, i would always compulsively start to organize her ponies. i lined them up in a neat row on the carpet up against a wall and i combed their manes and tails with a little purple plastic glittery comb. i knew that it was weird for me to be organizing someone else's toys, but the best part was that libby didn't mind. she just sat beside me on the floor and watched while i meticulously groomed her crayon-smeared plastic horses and we talked about whatever it is that 5-year-olds talk about for hours.

it wasn't just libby's toys that i was jealous of. she had The World's Greatest Dad. steve. he was handsome and fit. he ran and cycled in races. he wore an imaculate airforce uniform to work every day. he was funny and warm and charming and i wished that he were my dad every time i saw him. i remember one afternoon after i had finished my pony grooming routine at libby's house, her dad came in and asked if we wanted to bake some cookies with him. this was the greatest question i had ever been asked. we ran to the kitchen where steve helped us each tie a little apron around us. he pulled two tall wooden kitchen chairs up to the counter. and we baked. it was messy and silly and funny and delicious. we baked two different types of cookies and it took all afternoon and it was one of the best afternoons of my little life. he let us pour in all the ingredients into the big green, ceramic bowl and mix them with a huge wooden spoon. we spilled things and laughed and ate way too many cookies.
steve was everything my dad wasn't. steve knew how to really laugh. he knew how to shrug off things like an entire 5-pound bag of flour exploding all over the kitchen floor. he knew how to relax and just being around him made everyone else in the room at ease. my dad would not and could not ever be anything even remotely like steve. although he has mellowed out considerably over the past two decades, my dad is rigid, aggressive, and, frankly, sort of difficult to be around in general. but one of the most important things i've learned in life is that people, all people, will have qualities that i don't like. and no matter how much i'd like them to be different, i can't change them. so instead of comparing my dad to steve or anyone to anybody else, i've learned that it's better to like people in spite of (and sometimes because of) their imperfections. i liked libby's mess of a pony collection because it made me value my pristine pair of ponies so much more. i liked her charming father because he made me appreciate the fact that i am more like him than my own dad.

maybe this is why i've always sort of favored people who seem like a work in progress.

i mean...i could never scrub all the crayon marks off libby's ponies or restore their manes to their silky, synthetic perfection, but i could at least help them be their best and love them, flaws and all.