Old Friends

Saturday night, all the forces of the universe aligned and Skye, Dana and I were once again in the same room. As kids, this was no rare occurrence, and in fact, for us to NOT be in the same room was more of a rarity than anything. We were, as my parents always said "attached at the hip". I still have some first memories of meeting the both of them... 2ND grade lunch.... Skye and her incredible talent for making kids laugh so hard their milk came out of their nose (true story). Those days when the net heads served mashed potatoes were highly anticipated by most. I still can't eat mashed potatoes and not picture 8 year old Skye with an open mouth full of squishy mashed taters and a table full of giggling girls. It's memories like these that make me see how much I miss being a kid. When I'm going through my memory file, the first thing I see is our table laughing hysterically, and then I see the reason for our laughter and realize how happy we must have been to laugh that hard, for that long, at something as simple and ridiculous as a mouth full of mashed potatoes. What I would do to find something so simple, so hysterical again. And on those very special days, there was Dana, laughing so hard she pee her pants (more than once, that was a true story). The three of us have somehow managed to always come back to each other. Growing up, we made new friends, sharing most, keeping some for our own, but all the while keeping our friendship on a very short leash. To this day, if someone from school sees me, their pleasantries are almost always followed by asking how Skye and Dana are. And for 21 years now, I have ALWAYS been able to answer.

Saturday, we celebrated Skye's 30Th birthday. The party was also for David and Mazi, who were also celebrating their 30Th, so it was a pretty big party. At some point, the three of us ended up escaping to a back room, alone, where we entered a time machine that took us back some 21 years. Suddenly, we were once again finishing each others sentences, and I was discovering that after all these years, those memories that I (and I'm sure each of them) thought that only I held on to, belonged to two other people as well. Without hesitation, we reverted back to those 10 year olds giggling and snorting and half peeing in our pants as the world around us somehow just disappeared. Along with the manners and niceties, the stress and worry of the "real stuff" was left at the door of our rusty time machine. For a moment in time Dana's worries about filing for divorce disappeared. Skye's heartache over loosing her dad, and her grandma, and her fear of being single and kidless at 30 disappeared too. What we were left with was the core of who we are, or maybe it was just a piece of who we are without the fog of all the years getting in the way of what we once were. Whatever it was, it was perfect. It was our moment.

As much as we wanted to stay back in that time machine and just go on forever reminiscing and catching up, we knew we had people to mingle with, obligations to fulfill, and new friends to think about, but before we parted we made a pact. With tears in our eyes, we vowed to pick up the phone more often, and never let go of what we have. I know that our lives will go on just as they always have, each on our separate paths, with our separate friends and the occasional phone call. We won't do Sunday lunch, and we won't call each other when someone cuts us off, or when one of our kids is driving us nuts, or at any other time when normal life happens. We'll probably call one of our new friends, maybe our new best friend. But what's so amazing about a friendship like ours is that's ok. That's us, and like always, that leash will always be short, and I will ALWAYS know how they're doing. And I will always see mashed potatoes in a way that only the three of us will ever understand.

Happy Birthday my friend.