Friendship

It is such a rare, rare thing in this world to meet another person with whom you can be unabashedly, unadulteratedly, uncomplicatedly yourself. Another person who won't mind if you lose your train of thought mid-sentence and jump to another topic; another person who can see you running around braless in your pajamas with your hair sticking up; another person who thinks it's funny when you're bored and decide to start speaking in a high-pitched puppet voice. For half an hour.

I have the distinct honor and blessing of being married to one of these people...


Jason reads Paradise Lost to newborn Eva

And I have the privilege to have known one in high school...


Tonya and her husband Rajiv,
from their wedding this past August

And I have the joy of knowing a several from college...


Erika and baby Taylor...


Cary...


...and Tracy. 'Cause if you roll with me,
you have to be willing to make an ass out
of yourself for my amusement.

And I met so many lovely people in grad school, all of whom could probably take the puppet voice in varying degrees, but one of whom expects it.



That's my friend Courtney, there. She was one of my bridesmaids-- in fact, she woke up at 4:00 am the morning of my wedding to do my hair-- and was the first person on the planet (besides Jason) to know when I was pregnant with Eva. She is the kind of friend you can call with only twenty minutes' notice to come with you to a yoga class, or shopping, or over for stir-fry, or just to say "Hey, I'll be over in twenty minutes, and we're going out to do something. So, um, figure something out for us to do."

Friends like this are a rare commodity. They may even be in short supply. A friend like Courtney might be like one of those signed Hummel statues on ebay that your grandmother really wants, but can't have, because there are only three of them in the world and this one is selling for 7,000 euro. So your Grandma sits there, daydreaming, as the clock ticks down and somewhere, someone with a lot of euro to spare dusts a special spot on their Hummel shelf for just that figurine.

That Courtney. She's positively collectible. And, to my great dismay, she's no longer available in this market, having absconded to Pittsburgh to pursue the job opportunity of a lifetime (or, at least, a really good one). She's been there for over a year now, but there are still times when I find myself thinking about what plans we can make over the weekend.

Courtney, just so you know, this past weekend we were going to go to the Pumpkin Show.