Friends of the Forever Kind

I had lunch today with my oldest friend. I have known Anna literally my entire life. I was actually in the hospital with her the day she was born when I was only 3 months old. We grew up together, played Barbies and Power Rangers and dressed up like princesses.

We had our ups and downs over the years. One of my favorite stories to tell about us came from our Kindergarten class. We had gotten into a fight about something, I can't remember what, and Anna stormed off with an emphatic, "You're not my best friend anymore!" and I yelled back, "Fine!" A few minutes later I was called over by the teacher who asked me if I'd told Anna we weren't best friends anymore. I told her, "No, Anna said, 'You're not my best friend,' and I said, 'Fine.'" And then Anna, serious as hell, through her tears said, "But you're supposed to argue."

I am happy to say that 25 years later, she's still one of my very best friends. We don't always keep up as much as we'd like and having lunch together happens too rarely, but we always pick up right where we left off.

I love meeting up with her because I'm always interested to see where her life is heading. She just spent several weeks in Sri Lanka bathing elephants (seriously!). Now, she's planning a trip to New Zealand where she'll spend at least 3 more months there. But she doesn't even know if she's leaving in November or sometime next year. Anna lives in the excitement of the unknown, which makes me a little jealous sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with where my life has taken me, but at this point, I feel that things are sort of planned out. I miss that feeling of not knowing what's coming next. I hate that I don't have an option of moving to some distant land for any number of months. I'd love that opportunity to travel and try new things.

I feel that someday Anna is going to put together a memoir of her life and it would be really exciting to read. I wish that if I put together the story of my life that others would want to read it, but the cold, honest truth is that I don't think it would be that interesting. Like I said, I'm not disappointed with my life in any way, but I would like some sort of legacy to be able to pass along. It makes me want to be more spontaneous and exciting, but then I realize that I have a mortgage and other expenses to think about and being spontaneous usually means expensive. I also know I have my whole life ahead of me and there's no time like the present to start writing whatever story you want.