It’s the first day of school, and Nancy Reid and Martha O’Neill feel like a pair of 5-year olds.

The yard at Bessborough Drive Elementary & Middle School teems with humidity and nerves, as parents hold umbrellas and small hands. Reid and O’Neill, both 75, look at the Leaside school where they met on the first day of kindergarten and picture themselves in 1945, running in the yard, playing hopscotch and jump rope and Yoki and the Kaiser.

“Do you know that one?” Nancy asks, as she and Martha engage in light gymnastics in their sensible sandals, imagining a series of elastics between their legs, like cat’s cradle.

They’re standing here because Martha thought it would be neat, 70 years later, to walk back to school. So she wrote to the Star, not telling Nancy about that part until it was a sure thing. Martha is spontaneous like that.

“I said, ‘Whaaaat?’” Nancy recalls, the more cautious of the two.

“You don’t jump into the fire,” Martha says with a laugh.

As the streets fills with convoys of adults, children and dogs, the old friends walk by the brick homes that have the same bones but slightly different faces than they remember. One belonged to a veteran who built a bomb shelter in the basement. Another was home to the boy who gave Nancy her first kiss.

Martha leans into one front yard, running her fingers through the wet grass. This is the yard of four-leaf clovers that made them late for lunch. None today.

They have umbrellas for this walk, but Martha doesn’t remember it raining in her memories.

“Well, it must have,” Nancy says, laughing.

They walked this route four times a day — in the morning, back and forth at lunch, and in the afternoon. Nancy was the shyer of the two, and Martha was good for her. They were teens in the 1950s with rolled-up jeans and curls, singing in the church choir — Nancy a soprano, Martha an alto. Nancy wore glasses. Martha wanted glasses so badly. Nancy was taller, but wished she were Martha’s height.

In the 1960s, Martha travelled the world while Nancy was changing diapers. “She always wanted to hear what I had to say,” Martha says.

“We were just a phone call away,” Nancy adds.

They play bridge once a week, celebrate their May birthdays together, and go for coffee at the midpoint between their homes, a Tim Hortons in a plaza near Victoria Park Ave. and the 401. Martha takes cream and sugar, Nancy takes two sweeteners, and they talk in endless waves, about current events, grandchildren and old times. They only have to say “remember when,” and the events replay in their minds like a film.

Their four-hour chats have led to run-ins with municipal parking authorities. Martha plans to fight the latest ticket in court; Nancy paid already.

“This is the difference with us,” Nancy explains. “I said the heck with it.”

Separately, each woman gives a near-identical answer about the other: She listens, she never judges, she helps me. She is reliable, she is kind. I can tell her things I couldn’t tell anybody else.

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When Nancy’s mother became ill, Martha visited her in the hospital, and she looked in on Nancy’s dad after she died. Nancy drew strength from Martha’s kindness. And Nancy has always been there for Martha, too.

“She’s just been . . . she’s my rock. You know, you talk about wings — what’s that Bette Midler song? That’s how I think of Nancy,” Martha explained on the phone before the meeting. “She just knows when to say things. There’s another song … ‘You’ve gotta know when to hold ’em.’ … Yes, “The Gambler.” She’s the epitome of that, too.”

They stand on the steps of their old school as high-pitched voices float out the windows. Inside these walls in 1945, their kindergarten class played a get-to-know-you game. Nancy Wylie had her hair in braids and “a pretty smile.” Martha Colby had a short, fuzzy perm and was just “so cute.” They didn’t roll the ball to anyone but each other. They have never looked back.

“Some of these kids we saw today — maybe they’ll meet their best friend,” Nancy says, before we say goodbye.

Then they walk down the street for coffee, lost in conversation. Seventy years later, there is still so much to say.