I am the same size in pants, shoes, and rings. I told you this last night, this recent discovery of mine, while sitting on the lawn in this heat, and that somehow it makes me feel balanced. You said only I would think of that.
Balance in my life, this thing that has kept us going for over half our lives, 18 years to be exact, whether you're living in Montana or Florida or France or Mississippi or New Orleans, that started when we were 13 years old and in Mrs. Wiseman's class here in Bellingham, wearing the same shoes. I think about those shoes all the time now, obsess over them, I just mentioned them in your birthday card, and how they were ugly shoes (suede loafers, weren't they?) but we loved them, mine black and yours brown. We both turn 31 this summer, and in two summers will mark 20 years, and not the kind of friendship that other people experience, where they don't talk for years at a time or leave each other and come back, but the kind of friendship that is like your arm is really my arm, my leg is really your leg. Do you remember earlier this summer when we discussed how we will celebrate our Golden Anniversary?
Last night, we started talking about the passage of time, how I saw your cousin's daughter at a baseball game this summer and she was a kid, in kindergarten or the first grade, and I was genuinely taken aback because I remember a Christmas party at your house, where she was a baby, being held by her mother, maybe two years ago (wasn't it last year?). I never thought we'd be old enough to talk about the passage of time like this.
We have been given this shared history, remembering all of the people and places with our shared brain, and we now move forward into 31 years, and into anything and everything that comes speeding toward us after that.
