Mori

Who wants a story? OK, here's a story.

Picture it...New Jersey...March 21, 1986

I was 11 years old, and I was at an NCSY Shabbatton in West Orange. My first Winter Regional, 6th grade. We were staying in someone's basement, about 10 girls, on the floor, in sleeping bags. As we unpacked our PJs, my older sister's classmate and friend Mori stepped on a framed picture I took everywhere with me. It was a double frame of Donni and me as babies and as adolescents; we were best friends, as our parents were and still are. Mori broke the glass in the frame, and I didn't mind too much. She looked at the pictures very closely and started to cry. We didn't have time to talk as we were on our way to an activity. There would be time for the talk later.

When we arrived home after a long evening of sweaty circle dancing, lots of emotional singing, and even Torah learning, Mori and I sat down on the steps to talk about what happened. She confided in me that her life was not going so well at the moment. It seemed that the boy she liked couldn't return the sentiments, which was tragic to an Eighth Grader. Over the next several hours, as I was not one for going to sleep early, we shared our deepest fears, our impossible dreams, and many, many secrets. We became best friends.

My parents were none too pleased with this new friendship, as Mori was actually my sister's friend, and I was infringing on her group already. But I wouldn't hear of it. Mori was amazing. She was loyal, trustworthy, not catty, and, most of all, didn't mind being best friends with someone 2 years her junior.

The next year, as Mori and my sister's class graduated and moved on to high school, I joined them in the middle school there. Now I got to see Mori and my other friends every day on the bus and at lunch. As my grades took a nosedive from the new enormous pressure of departmentalized study, my parents thought that the best course of action was an indefinite "grounding". Some of the enjoyment I was forbidden during this time included TV, music, phone, movies, and.......sitting next to Mori on the bus. While my sister was no tattletale, certainly not by high school, I was relatively a "good girl" and followed the rules, and so I talked to Mori from across the aisle. There were other colorful busmates then, but that is for another story another time.

Mori went through some difficult times, and she once told me she tried to use the piece of glass she had saved from my frame against herself. I believe the scar on her wrist is still visible.

Mori and I shared many friends, some my age, some her age, some in the middle. One girl who was in Mori's class in high school was Nechama. She came from a broken home, as did Mori, and she was very blond and very eccentric. After a time, we always ate lunch together, and those lunches made up some of my most free and fondest memories of my "house arrest" period.

In the spring, Nechama had a new boyfriend, and often shared the intimate details of her relationship with us. By the time school was out, Nechama thought she might be pregnant. I went to Israel with my family for the summer, and spent the entire time thinking about Nechama and whether or not she was pregnant.

She wasn't. But she continued to have "scares" all through high school.

When Mori left for Israel after high school, part of me left with her. The year I was 16 was the hardest year of my youth. All my friends who were of that age left the country. While some came back when the Gulf War was imminent, Mori didn't, and neither did my sister. They believed in staying where they were learning. But I resented them for staying.

Mori came back and started college, and we were never the same. Different stages of life, I guess. I had made new friends, and so had she, and we moved on. Some years later, Mori was one of my bridesmaids, and, since I was living in Detroit with a job by then, I couldn't make it to her wedding two weeks later. Nechama walked down, though.

A few months ago, when I told my sister we were making Aliyah, the first thing she said was, "Next summer? With Mori?" I actually hadn't known of their plans, but what a hoot if we're on the same flight with our husbands and children!

To this day, Mori remains the best friend I ever had. While Donni, Faiga, Michelle, Karen, Rafi, Ilana S., and Ilana W. (in that order) were all incredible, significant friends and confidantes, Mori had it all. She was brilliant, honest, respectful, hilarious, sensitive, and never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not even my mother. She never cared what anyone else thought of her, and she taught me to do the same.