by Elliott Rose
During my first year of college, I was enrolled in an early morning English class. One morning, while standing in the hallway waiting for the classroom doors to open, I met a girl who was waiting there as well. She was heading to her art class. I was going to English. We started talking.
And just like that, we became friends.
She was nothing like me. And I was nothing like her. We came from entirely different worlds. I think she was intrigued by my life—my background, where I came from, the way I had grown up. And I was drawn to her because she was whole. She was present. She was kind. Loving. Caring. Grounded in a way that I wasn’t.
She gave me something I didn’t realize I needed at the time. Not a physical home, but a kind of spiritual home. A place of steadiness. A place where I didn’t have to perform or explain or hold myself together.
When my mother became sick, she was the person I turned to. She gave me guidance. Support. Friendship. We laughed endlessly. We had so much fun together. There was lightness in our relationship even during the heaviest moments of my life.
It was a beautiful relationship. And it still exists to this day.
I love her. And I am deeply grateful for her.
She had lost her own mother just a few years before. At the time, neither of us understood that we were being drawn into each other’s lives because of that shared experience—because one of us had already walked the path the other was about to walk.
This friendship has sustained me for thirty-five years. Thirty-six years. And counting.
She is the reason I moved to California.
After college, she left first. She didn’t finish college. She moved to California to pursue her dreams. She wanted to attend Vidal Sassoon Beauty School. She moved with one of her childhood friends. I even wrote a reference letter for her—to help her get into Vidal Sassoon.
I stayed behind in Wisconsin, where I was still finishing school. But our relationship continued. We talked on the phone constantly. I flew out to visit her a couple of times. She flew back to Wisconsin to visit her family and to see me. Distance didn’t break the connection. Time didn’t erode it.
She is someone I am endlessly proud of. In awe of.
After moving to California, she decided to start a business booking extras for movies, Extras Management. How she came up with that, or how she found her way into that world, I have no idea. But she and her friend built it from nothing. She worked tirelessly. She created a remarkably successful business—one she remains involved with to this day.
It is a spectacular story.
I’ve never been someone who has a large social circle. I don’t do big group dynamics. I am a one—or at most two—friend person. I may socialize in larger groups, but only one or two people ever occupy real space in my heart.
She is one of those people.
She still is.
When I graduated, I packed up and moved to California immediately. I had no father to go home to. No family home waiting for me. No place to land.
So I went to the person who was my home—inside my head and my heart.
By coincidence, by chance, I arrived in California exactly one year to the day after my mother’s death. January 25th.
And that is where I began my life here.