If I had a list of Happiest Days, yesterday would be on it. And I wasn't even knitting.
One of my most favorite people is in town visiting her parents and we spent 8 hours together. It felt like about 8 minutes.
Jill and I have been friends since 9th grade, and we probably haven't seen each other for about 10 years, I think. We write, email, exchange birthday and Christmas cards and read each other's blogs, but those things pale in the bright light of sitting across a table, talking and sharing laughter.
We were 17 again, trapped in bodies that were 30 years older. And despite those 30 years, both of us proclaimed the other to have not changed a bit. That is looking through the eyes of friendship love, I tell you. We reminisced about high school days, and looked through our senior yearbook, at pictures of the two of us when we each had one chin and smooth, skinny necks. We are glad that big eyeglasses are out of style. (Jill, who is now a Lasik Miracle, was relieved that her senior picture was taken without her glasses, and laments the fact that she was wearing them in her wedding pictures. But hey, she had to actually see to get down the aisle.)
We shared High School P.E. Class outrages, and the fact that one cannot do "Swivel Hips" on the trampoline should really not cause one to be Scarred For Life. And personally, unlike the pain of childbirth, I will never forget the pain of struggling to do a somersault on the balance beam with the snaps of my gym uniform digging into my shoulder. This was back in the day of polyester one-piece gym uniforms that you stepped into and snapped at the shoulders, leaving you both prone to the aforementioned shoulder pain and the fear that if you stretched yourself up too tall, your whole uniform would pop open and fall off.
We revealed scandalous secrets- dare I mention a beaded Indian belt and a pair of underpants? I hope Jill will share that story on her blog, or in a book someday. And we confessed childhood injuries never reported to our mothers, things that occurred when we were Breaking The Rules, and thus must be dealt with in secret. Like the time I rode my bike barefoot! and in an attempt to perform a "stunt", stuck my feet into the spokes of my back wheel.
We mourned the loss of the day when kids waited for their mothers, not the other way around. Because back in our day, You had better be out there waiting for your ride, young lady, when so and so's mother came to pick you up. I remember thinking Sue's mom the "coolest" because she drove a VW bug and squeezed in a bunch of us to take to the mall. But we still would not have dared to make her wait.
The weather was perfect. We spent several of those hours together outside, sipping iced tea, and later, wine.
For lunch, I fixed that yummy salad you and I had in Cicero, which I have cleverly named Cicero Salad.
We laughed, HARD, at each other as we staged and photographed our lunches for the blogs before we took our first bites.
We talked of marriage, husbands, motherhood and our kids, parents and siblings, of politics and blogging (do we abuse the use of commas, italics, parenthesis and quotations marks?).... it was a full day. One that I think both of us were reluctant to see end, but 2 glasses of wine was the limit and my family had returned and were starting to ask what the dinner plans were.
When you are blessed with a friend like this, you just KNOW that somewhere along the way, you did something right.
Love,
Kim
