Molly was the “girl next door” (actually across the street) in my life and, most significantly, my best friend from age three to seven. At the time I did not understand how important this relationship would be to me in shaping my adult life, even though I saw Molly only once after age eleven. As a parent, I have also seen how my son Eric benefited from a similar relationship with a girl who lived across the street and became his best friend for several years.

Molly and I were comrades of the soul. We played pretend astronauts and soldiers and created innumerable adventures together. We always had the spot next to each other at each other’s birthday parties, no matter how many other kids were there. There was nothing that divided us.

Molly had the coolest split level house. Five half-levels with a finished basement at the bottom up through dining, living and bed room levels to Molly’s bedroom in the attic. She and I spent long hours alone together up there away from the prying eyes of our parents. Good thing, because I’m not sure all four parents, her folks and mine, would have approved of everything she and I were doing in that attic.

I vividly remember, at least once (and maybe once was enough), an agreement between us where I would hide behind her big overstuffed chair so neither could see the other. We then both proceeded to take all our clothes off and reveal our naked selves to the other. We noted and even commented that I had a little thingy poking out from between my legs and she did not. This small detail was judged insignificant by our collective wisdom and we basked in the excitement and way pre-pubescent heat of breaking convention and being naked together, and with no one around to shame us into being otherwise. Her slight anatomical difference was not the source of the excitement, it would have been just as thrilling to show all if we had both been boys.

Now by age four, I knew that Molly was one of those human beings they called “a girl” and I was that other category they called “a boy.” Our attic revelation I guess confirmed at least one difference, however minor. But whatever differences our parents and other adults had associated with these two varieties had never jibed with our experience of each other – comrades of the soul that we were.

Up into the modern era, some male philosophers, writers and scholars did not believe that women even had souls. By age four I was firmly convinced that they definitely did. And despite books on the subject, I remain convinced to this day that men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. The deepest part of who we are — the soul, the spirit, consciousness, or however you define it – has no gender.