While I was at work today, my friend, Carla, left a message. I miss you. I’ve been thinking about you. Give me a call.
Sigh.
Carla was the first mom friend I made when we moved to Maryland. She and Jim were fellow transplanted Midwesterners who lived a few doors down from us. While we were moving in her mom kept an eye on the activity and later that day met Mark at the dumpster. Do you have a baby, she asked. Yes, six weeks old, he said. My daughter lives there. Her baby is three weeks old and tomorrow her and your wife need to meet each other.
The Big Daddy went along with Betty’s plan and that is how a twenty five year friendship began.
Since those years we have never lived near each other and long stretches of time go by when we don’t talk, but when we do it is just like the old days when we’d meet each other on the sidewalk with crying babies.
She had seen the photos from Maggie and Nate’s wedding and wanted to know the deets. I filled her in about that lovely day and then we talked about everything from yoga to kids to us both turning into retail girls.
Whenever anyone asks me about the wedding and if I was emotional, I tell them about two things. One was when everyone had come up the aisle and we were waiting for the bride. I stuck my head out of the pew and looked at the back of the church and saw Mark and Maggie.
Oh Lordy, will you look at those two? She’s so happy. He’s so proud.
The other time I wanted to cry was when my hairdresser came to the house. Nearly ten years of her taming my wild curls, hearing about my decorating projects, my dog, the garden, the kitchen I want to gut, my husband………..my husband! There she was with all of her magic, and I still can’t talk about how much it meant to me to have her here that day without getting choked up.
With all that Carla and I talked about I never got around to that part but I didn’t need to. If anybody would know about a full heart spilling over it would be the friend who was there from the start.
