One is arriving at the airport today. She has loaned me more money than any other friend. She was the first to hold all of my babies, and she has generally been pretty kick ass for most of the twenty five years since the third grade.
Our childhood took us through the usual junk together. We colored pictures and taped SOS messages to her cat. We read teen magazines. Her house was the first one where I ever locked myself in a closet for five minutes with the boy the bottle was pointing at.
At sixteen, I resigned form the popular group for various reasons (mostly because I was having my love affair with Jesus) so we drifted apart for two years. After high school we both went off on our respective journeys, but when I moved back to Minneapolis from London when I was twenty three, she was there. I was working at the coffee shop which seemed to be a magnet for everybody I had gone to high school and college with. They were all working on PhDs or vet degrees or doing their post docs, and I was wearing a Starbucks hat. There were many fun conversations..
Boy from High School: I thought you would be a math genius by now.
Me: Would you like a flavor shot with that?
It was awesome, but when she sauntered in with her hippie skirt and ordered her soy chai latte, my Starbucks hat seemed not to matter. We became fast friends, and the adult portion of our friendship became arguably more important that the childhood portion of it.
I had moved back to Minneapolis and left the man in London. In six months, I was going to meet him at our wedding, and in the meantime, it seemed necessary to get drunk eight times a week (twice on Sundays) so she helped me with that goal. Our friendship was sealed at a party when she started fumbling over the lyrics to White Snake's Wasted Rock Ranger. Because I had gotten that single for my twelfth birthday, I was able to swoop in with every other word for the world's best drunken White Snake duet ever. ever.
Five or six years later, she called because she had just learned that my dad had died the day before. I told her not to come over...
Her: I've already called in to work. I'm on the way, dude.
Me: Don't except me to fucking cry in front of you, and don't touch me or anything.
Her: I know you, dude. I'm just coming to kick it. We can do whatever you need to do.
Since I had lost my dad the day before and my youngest son was seven days old, it only made sense to go look at apartments to rent. While she and I were poking around another little Victorian a few blocks away from our current place, I realized that I just couldn't stomach another over-priced small place with a mice infestation and no dishwasher so I turned to her and said, "Fuck it, dude, I'm moving to Colorado."
Twelve weeks later, she helped us clean our apartment, and she was the last person I said goodbye to when I left St Paul. I'm sure this week will be full of long conversations and way too many uses of the words fuck and dude, but it will be awesome. She's seen me in labor. She's seen me in curled bangs. More than once, a phone call from her has kept me sane. It doesn't matter how horrible the kids are or how dirty the carpet is, she won't judge me.
I'll never move back to the Midwest. I may have said once that I'd be tempted to go just so I could see the Evangelical housewife once a week, but there is a more compelling reason now. I can only assume that my friend is going to start breeding soon, and I will be so sad to miss it. I wish I lived closer so that I could go hang out and hold her babies and watch her take care of them becuase she will be a pretty kick ass mother, but oh well, we'll have to content ourselves with the week.
(I just realized the title makes it look like this post might be about my period...)
