Though the Miles May Separate...

I have a delightful friend who lives in Texas.  We have been friends for twenty-three years.  Twenty-three years!  Miles have separated us for most of those years, however, but we found a way to stay in touch.  There were summers in her grandparents' basement.  Let me give you a mental snapshot: it's 1997.  Leonardo DiCaprio's photo from "Teen Beat" is pasted to a pole in the basement, and we slow dance with him sometimes.  We also play the soundtrack to Selena, love the Spice Girls, and still play dress-up while creating in-depth dramas.  We are obsessed with Tom Cruise and Leo, and Titanic is AMAZING.  We laugh at anything and everything until we wheeze and cry.

Fast forward several years, and life gets busy.  We go to college-- she for art education, me for education education, and towards the end of our college years, we plan an epic trip to Europe.  Armed with our knowledge of art and history, we take on our favorite city alone: Paris.  Then on to Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, and France.  It is the adventure of a lifetime.

And then life gets even more busy, and we have real jobs, real lives, and are grown ups.  The visits are less frequent, but somehow we manage through phone calls and facebook.  Finally, after three years apart, we reunite in Texas.  We find that we still have so much in common that it creeps us out a little (I mean, we  buy the same things without realizing it, sometimes at the same time, and we go through similar life experiences at the same time too... it's weird).  We still go antiquing together, and we still inspire each other to new levels of creativity.  And we still laugh until we wheeze and cry.

Though miles will probably continue to separate us for years, our hearts were bound together a long time ago in that inexplicable bond that childhood friends share. 

Who knows where we'll be in three more years, or thirty more years.  But one thing I know: we will always be friends, we will always be there for each other, we will always be family, and we will always laugh until we wheeze and cry.