I had the weirdest dream.   I was in a carnival-like crowd of gazillions of people.   We were on a city street outside what I knew to be the hotel I was staying in.   I was surrounded by high-rises and  hundreds of people, many I knew from various times and places of my life  and there was family.   At some point several people I knew approached me and said, “Some one is here to see you.   It is some one that you have not seen in a very long time.   Who did you used to see regularly at your mother’s house, but haven’t recently and you’ve been wondering?”

Here is the strange part-this is my dream and the whole time they are  leading me towards this “some one” and asking me who I think it is,  I have no clue.   In fact in my dream I was thinking, Oh no-I have no idea, what if i don’t remember this person?   What if I don’t even want to see this person?!   I even thought: well it can’t be my Grandma Hallet, because she is dead.

I grew up in many places.   My dad was a pastor in a denomination where you did that-just moved to the next place once you had “finished your work there,” or if there was a crisis elsewhere in which you’d had previous success.  Unfortunately for me, my dad was able to rally the troops when previous pastors had caused the sheep to go running, so he was always getting a call, and off we’d go.

So in the dream, some one had me by the arm and I am in a state of total unknowing as I am led through the crowd to some one.   I have no idea.   It was even like I somehow knew it was a dream and I was thinking I should be able to choose who it would be, but I couldn’t seem to do it.   The crowd parted and I was absolutely surprised, completely taken aback  to see –    my best  childhood friend, Debbie Bettis.   There she was, me 48 and her still college-aged, like the last time I saw her.   She  was standing there with  2 little girls, which I assumed were her daughters.

Until that crowd parted, until I actually saw her, I didn’t have a clue who was going to be there, which is what made it so weird to me.   It could have been anybody.   But it was Debbie.   Long time no see.

Debbie and I met, I am almost positively sure, on Sunday evening August 8, 1965.   We were both just about to start Kindergarten and the reason the timing stands out is that it was  the week  my sister, Tami, had been born and was one of the rare occasions my mom wasn’t at church with us.   Debbie came with her dad in her little blue-pastel, horn-rimmed corrective glasses (and they actually did correct and she had perfect vision within a year or so) and as our fathers conversed following service, she and I just stood there and looked at each other – each standing very close to our dads.

But before long, Debbie’s family had involved themselves deeply in the life of the church and our families were fast friends.   They even moved to our neighborhood and we attended Wallace Elementary together.

Debbie had thick red hair, which I loved to style, but about which she was not as enthusiastic.   I was a compliant minister’s daughter-or else.   Debbie was sassy and daring  and good-hearted.   Our moms ordered our very first bras in a two-for-one deal from an Alden’s catalog and then we  promptly got them taken away when we threw them out the window onto the neighbor boys’ heads one afternoon.   We went to church together at least 3 times a week, our families got together for fellowship in between and there were  church people  who would tattle on me because I didn’t play with their girls as much as I did with Debbie.   But how could I?   She was so smart and interesting and the one  to whom I could cry, sharing my deepest burdens, like  when I had just found out my Uncle Donald, whose soul condition concerned me greatly,  had partaken in the sin of smoking cigars and drinking on his birthday.   She helped me pray that one through, cried with me. Uncle Donald is following the Lord wholly today, thank-you very much!

We must’ve been on an anti-smoking mission, as she and I  also would hide (or steal, depending on your point of view)  and destroy her mother’s cigarettes and then be sent right  to the neighborhood store to buy more as punishment.   Yes, I am old enough that I could do that legally.

But, just before 5th grade, my parents announced we would leave Des Moines, the city of my birth, and go start another church in Davenport.   That changed everything.   I had to leave my best friend behind.  

We saw each other through denominational church functions throughout our teen years and when their family would come for a visit or we’d go back to Des Moines to see family.   We kept in touch during college via phone intermittently and managed a visit or two during that time.   But then life just happens.   You don’t plan, after this conversation, we’ll probably never talk again, but that happens.

I guess I  just wonder about the little girl who was never far away during such formative Kindergarten through 4th grade years, tighter ties because our fathers were good friends, our worship and belief systems intertwined.   This certainly was brought on by my recent re-connection with some Junior High friends (Sherri and Lorri of Cedar Rapids, IA)  and the fun it is to once again “hear their voices,” the fun of the  discovery that  the person  you knew 30-plus years ago still exists and has turned out both exactly  and better than you could’ve imagined.   Wow-wait, 40-plus years ago with Debbie…

So, wherever  she is, I know  Debbie Bettis  is accomplished and surrounded in fineness.   I know that she has not let anything deter her from her goals.   If she is a mom, she has cared about the details and has strong heart-loyalty to her children.   And I recall her with fondness as the girl who knew, when she planned a surprise going-away party for me just before we left Des Moines, that when she non-chalantly called and asked me to come and play and I said I didn’t think I would (walking 6 or 7 blocks to “play” wasn’t goal-oriented enough-what would we be doing??!), she knew to bait me with, “Bring your hair supplies and I’ll let you fix my hair.”   Now, with a mission in mind, I packed my round vinyl bag with curlers, bobby-pins, hair spray and barrettes and off I went to where my first-best-friend-ever had prepared a delightful soiree just  for me.   But I have to admit I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to do anyone’s hair.

You don’t forget people like that…Jeanie

NOTE TO READERS:   I was thinking about it and I don’t believe there are any photos of Debbie and I together.   Strange.   I have very few of her at all, but none of us together.   So-mommies, take pictures of your kids with their good friends because, though they’ll likely lose touch, they will enjoy the remembering…