Betty Sally lived in the basement, the best part of the house. She looked just like me, except for her long, blond hair, Rapunzel-length. I had the pixie cut. I danced with her in the basement in the house on Clinton Place and she was never demanding or surly, always ready to play or defer to me. She let me go first at everything from hopscotch to jumping rope and jacks. Betty Sally certainly didn’t cajole me into making her bed by saying she was timing me, like one of my sisters did.
I loved Betty Sally deeply, loyally and fearlessly. When my five older brothers and sisters would tire of my asking them to play, she was forever the willing partner. My mother fixed her snacks and reprimanded my brothers for sitting on her when she came shyly to the kitchen table, often unnoticed. At dinner each night my father dutifully asked how she was, prompting some melodramatic response until one night when I was 5 or 6 I replied that she had died. Pneumonia, I think, or tuberculosis, maybe polio.
In this delightful season of fantasy when we perpetuate tales of elves, angels and a red-suited, benevolent old man, I am reminded of the fantasy I built for my childhood and how well it served me. No one told me not to believe in Betty Sally, even if she did get blamed for many of the treacheries I committed as a small child. For she was real to me, real enough to see and smell and touch. I needed her to exist as much as she needed me. She was everything I wanted and needed her to be.
When my oldest son, Weldon, was 3, he had an imaginary friend named Shelby who lived in his armoire, the one I whitewashed and tinted a pale blue. I absentmindedly closed the car door on Shelby many times and forgot to set a place for him at dinner, but I never told my son he wasn’t real. I remembered Betty Sally. When Weldon was almost 4 and we moved back to the Chicago area near family into a house large and full of promise, I asked Weldon where Shelby would sleep.
“I don’t need Shelby anymore,” he responded matter-of-factly. “I have all my real cousins now.”
Between preschool and kindergarten, my second son, Brendan, concocted a boy named Jimmy, a rough-and-tumble type who would not let Brendan make his bed. Jimmy had long lapses in the hospital with various afflictions such as the “toucan pox” (the chicken pox was too plain) or “monia” and was even paralyzed briefly but recovered in time for a game of tackle soccer, Brendan’s favorite.
I listened to the tales of woe — mostly very gruesome involving blood and gore and broken bones — that accompanied Jimmy’s Dickensian life, daring not to question the sanctity of his existence. Eventually Jimmy expired one final time, Brendan unwilling to resuscitate him for another romp in the back yard.
Now each night at dinner we all listen to the travails of Michael, Colin’s best friend. Colin, who is very 3, travels to Michael’s house “all by myself,” does homework with Michael and plays basketball with him on a baseball team where they score goals. Michael can be blamed for everything from smearing toothpaste on the cabinet to making too much noise in his room at night. But, like all the other imaginary companions who have graced the landscape of this family, Michael suffers his share of maladies. Currently Michael is on vacation, recuperating from the time his head fell off.
This is a holiday season of celebration and hope, so I celebrate the hope I have had, the hope my children have, for an inseparable friend who is everything we dream. I am awed by the majestic insistence of imagination allowed to roam, and the strength of a child’s fantasy that will not be daunted. I know that each time Shelby, Jimmy, Michael — or Betty Sally — has been injured, is a reflection of a reality that has stung each one of us. Miraculously, each friend survives the blows, a testament to the resilience of a child’s soul. I am as careful to ask the condition of Michael, as I was with Shelby and Jimmy, knowing that how well they attend to this friend will be how well they care for one who is real.
I laugh when I see the boys’ classmates wearing miniature electronic pets on colored ropes around their necks with beeping reminders to feed. In the stores I am amazed at the pricetag of these devices and how many people clamor to buy them. Our imaginary friends served the same purpose, without the bells and whistles. I am glad my children have each chosen to have a priceless friend whose life is as simple or morose as current whim requires. I am grateful, too, that they eventually will be retired, resting in the peace of a memory that is glorious and undisputed, a fantasy that was allowed to just be.
