Amy Payne (AKA: Amanda Ann Hand)

This month many years ago I was sent away to live with my cousin/aunt in California for the summer. I was 11 years old: scared, feeling completely alone. I thought I was a burden on everyone and that no one knew what to do with me. My friends were changing and I was not quite sure where I belonged. I became determined that I belonged only to myself. I am certain if it were not for my introduction to Amy I would have completely withdrawn from life and been a different person altogether. She saved me from myself. I met her within the first week. Amy's family and my cousins' family were friends. At our first meeting we went water skiing and became fast friends while we soaked up the sun, fun, and water; just kicking back on the boat pretending to be teenagers. As the dog days of summer strolled by the pathway between our houses became a routine hike, and I barely remember a day that we didn't see or talk to each other. Toward the end of the summer I remember sitting on the floor, in my cousin's sunken living room, in front of the piano, with Amy. She had brought over a little box of letter writing equipment: pens, pencils, stationary, and I believe "hello kitty" post-its. We decided that we would be pen pals and write each other often. She had already written on the post-its fun things that we had done like coming up with nicknames for each other and boys in the neighborhood, (i.e. BBQ) boating, girls camp, and especially our shared  responsibility in babysitting. She had written all our adventures, so that I could go home and show my friends what an amazing time I had in California. My heart still swells thinking about those cute little post-its that made me sound important and loved; I needed that. Amy's friendship changed the direction my life path was taking.

She could have not followed through with our plan to be pen pals and that would have been ok... we were just kids... but she did follow through. We wrote about once a month at first and then the letters were sometimes sparse and sometimes plentiful; it depended on what was going on in our lives. (Mine were more sparse than plentiful; she was much more faithful.) She always found quotes or stories that she put in her letters that were thought provoking or inspiring. I loved going to the mail box and finding a long thick envelope colorfully decorated with drawings and stickers. I was giddy every time because I knew each letter would be just as colorfully written. They made me laugh because no matter what she was going through, Amy always had a witty clever anecdote to go with the challenge. She did not mean for them to, but sometimes they made me cry because she would include a poem like this, and I would think about death, and if anyone would notice that I died, and what would people say when I died, and etc.:

So let me live that when I die,

A tear will come to every eye.
In every heart there'll be a spot,
An empty place where I am not.
So let me live that when I'm gone,
Kind thoughts of me will linger on.
And folks will say, with grief inside,
I sort of wish she hadn't died.

Her letters kept me grounded, though, and brought me out of my funk, eventually. They made me feel real because I existed outside of my bubble, my world. I existed in her world. I thought sometimes that I would disappear, and then there would be this colorful letter in MY mailbox with MY name, telling me that I was important enough for someone to sit down and write to me about their life; each letter making me less invisible.

As the years ticked by we continued to write and sometimes call, and see each other when I would visit California with my family for vacation. On one of those visits she decided that she would come back with me to Idaho to visit, and eventually live. We had some really amazing times and poor Rana, my sister, was the source of much of our entertainment and laughter. But...as many of you know living with someone is quite different from hanging out, and well...she got to see my truly pessimistic nature. She was normally awesome at turning my frown upside down. Babar the elephant comes to mind, but that is another story for another day. During one of my negative rants, Amy said something to me that again changed the direction my life path, she said, "Rochelle, no one wants to be around negative people, and I know how much you love people and having them around. So...you need to figure out how to be more positive." This raw, authentic, conversation changed my life. The change did NOT happen over night; this statement still takes a bench in the back of my mind, so that when, intuitively, my negative Nelly shows her face, it jumps up and calls me back. And... now I can not say that my personality is intrinsically positive, but I have made decisive efforts to look at life more optimistically. One thing that I would like to mention, though, is that Amy would not have been able to make this sort of fingerprint on my soul without the framework she laid in her safekeeping and care for my soul in the years leading up to this moment. I am a firm believer that criticism can only be productive when there is love and concern to back it up.

If any of this is sounding familiar you might be thinking of a particular movie with Bette Midler. After "Beaches" came out, Amy and I both said to each other, "this is our story." No...I unfortunately did NOT become a famous Broadway Star and Singer and our ending isn't as sad. But...Amy is, as cheesy as this sounds, "the wind beneath my wings."

Amy, there are too many inside jokes to recite, but anytime I see a cartoon elephant, Aladdin, Martin Short, or hear the name Muffy and a plethora of other random things I think of the ways that being introduced to you has changed my life. I am grateful to have had you as an example of a: strong, independent, optimistic, thoughtful, confident, beautiful woman as a partner in crime and friendship. I am blessed to have had you as my pen pal. You instilled a love of words and introduced me to a way of expressing and describing life that I believe enriched my soul. We formed a bond through words on paper. Thank you for bringing that letter box to Karie's and thank you for changing my life path. I will always consider you one of my best friends. Thank you!