I was 12 years old when we moved to America for the first time. I thought that it would be the easiest transition yet. After all, it’s where we were from.

I quickly discovered that my overseas experiences made me feel like a foreigner in the suburbs of Maryland and in the halls of Herbert Hoover Junior High School, but I also found a true friend who didn’t care about any of that, and accepted me as I was.

Here is an excerpt from EMBASSY KID, soon to be published by Westphalia Press and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.

Sara Mansfield Taber, who was also raised in the foreign service during the Cold War, and who holds a doctorate in human development from Harvard, observes in her memoir, born under an assumed name: “When you’re new one of two things happen: you’re befriended by other marginal girls, or an in-crowd girl decides to adopt you as a sidekick.“ My fourth grade classmate from Rome—who’d returned to the States ahead of me—had rejected me now that we were in seventh grade America, but there was a true friend waiting in Home Room.

It was a happy accident of the alphabet that Alice A. and Jane Amerson—before I switched to Kelly—were assigned to sit together first thing every morning, and we shared a locker all year. Alice was as studious and earnest as I was, and as tall as I was shrimpy. We made the most of our obvious difference in size by giving ourselves the nicknames of Tall One and Small One. Batman and Robin. Alice-New-Shoes and Janie-New-Glasses. Yep, we flaunted our “marginal girl” status.

Alice and her family lived on a large tract of land in rural Potomac, where I was a frequent overnight visitor on the weekend. Despite our different dimensions, we fit together on the seat of their riding mower. It was the most exotic experience, riding through that quintessential American scent of fresh-cut grass, driving a vehicle without adult supervision for hours at a time. Her mother’s rhubarb preserves from the large fruit and vegetable garden were heaven on Sunday morning pancakes.

We remained close friend for two years, but Alice and half the ninth grade left Hoover when a new junior high opened in Potomac. By the time, the two halves came back together as the sophomore class at Winston Churchill Senior High School, my attention had shifted to boys.

But, back at Hoover, Alice knew me. She really knew me.

JK Amerson López, EMBASSY KID: AN AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE FAMILY MEMOIR (Westphalia Press, publication pending)

When I went back overseas in 1971, the Maryland ties were severed—just as I had left Bogotá and Rome and Milan in the past. And when we passed through Washington DC in July 1973 when Dad was transferring between posts, I had the feeling I had missed a special friendship.

I called Alice—probably for the first time since eighth grade—but her mother said she was working in Appalachia. I wished I’d stayed in closer touch. I had very little practice in returning to a place. We did not drive out to our old house in the suburbs, where renters were now living. We weren’t really back. It had never really been home.

I went on a decade-long dance-and-college career. But Alice found me in 1982 when I was newly married and living in Queens. She and her boyfriend Tom stopped by the apartment to give us a wedding gift, a beautiful hand-painted wooden plate. It stayed with us when we moved to Albany—displayed in our colonial kitchen—but disappeared in the retirement transfer of our life to Florida.

As I completed the EMBASSY KID chapters on our Maryland life, I tracked Alice down to let her know how much she meant to me. Yesterday, Alice and her husband Tom—who will celebrate their 40th anniversary next month—stopped by our South Florida home on their way between their son’s house and their flight back to North Carolina.

Tall One and Small One are back together again. A friendship renewed, and expanded to include the two men who last met 42 years ago. The four of us look forward to many more conversations around the dinner table.

And Alice still knows me. She brought me this precious orchid which fits into our palm-and-orchid backyard.