I came into the world with friends. The twins were born one week earlier and patiently awaited my arrival. Their
father was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and my father was a Public Health Ph.D. student at
UC Berkeley. We lived in the same university apartments on Smyth Road, where the eucalyptus trees are tall and the crisp aroma still lingers in my senses.
The twins would regularly trek up from their apartment and climb through our window - this is the way all the kids entered our house as the door was on a less convenient side. We would play and laugh together. I don't remember too much of this time. Most of my memories come from pictures and stories from my mother and sister.
At one point the twins and their family moved out of the apartments and into a house in Albany. And we later moved to a house in Pinole. But we were meant to be friends. Their two older brothers were not much younger than my sister and were a fun bunch all together. Their mom and my mom have a friendship that is revived at every reunion as if we never moved thousands of miles away.
My family's move to Saipan (it was a return move for my parents and sister, but the first time that I was going to spend more than a summer on this tiny island) placed a vast ocean between myself and the twins. And becuase I have always been a horrible correspondant, it also placed years between us. I would receive the occasional birthday card or letter from the twins and I would promptly write back. But we weren't regular pen pals. Yet, practially every summer my family would make the trip back to the state of mine and my father's birth and I'd spend the summer with my friends, the twins. And it would be as if we had always been neighbors. During these great but all too short visits, one or more of our parents would drive us out to the old apartments on Smyth Road. We'd walk through the parking lot that used to house our family cars, we'd push each other on the merry-go-round until we couldn't see straight, we (or at least I) would breathe in that beautiful eucalyptus air, and our parents would talk about the fun times wrapped up in that old apartment complex.
I had other friends from Smyth Road, Javier Eduardo, Yoshi, and friends from the area like David. Since we moved to Saipan I have only seen Yoshi once when my family visited his family in Maryland. I made gyoza with
his mom one day while he was at a summer day camp. And I'd also see David at least once on our family vacations in the bay area. But I bet it's safe to say that I haven't seen him in about 15 years.
The last time I saw the twins was in December 1998, just before I started my first quarter at
Cal Poly. I celebrated Hannukah with them. That was the first time I tried
latkas. And that was when I learned to
knit. It was also the first time I found out what cold was - no amount of layering could truely make me warm.
I know that Yoni went to UCLA and Smadar went to Cal like her older brothers and my father. About a year ago she received her master's degree from a university in London and now works clear across the country from our old Bay Area home. One of their older brother's got married not too long ago and the other, last time I heard, was working in the city. I occasionally chat online with Smadar, but our schedules and the time difference make it a less often occurance than we'd like. And although I haven't seen or spoken with either of them in 7 1/2 years, I know that we're still friends.
After 25 years, I still have the same friends that I had when I came into the world.
