I remembered I wrote this and never posted it back in March when my friend asked me to be the matron of honor in her wedding that took place yesterday. Last night I wrote this whole post while laying in bed unable to sleep
(the eldest son wasn't home yet and there will be no sleep till he is).
My thoughts flowed and I had some amazing insights to relate, but today,
in the cold light of day nothing sounds just right.
I've got this friend up in Alaska and since she doesn't know I'm writing this, but rarely
checks my blog we'll call her
Christy (as in
Christy Brinkley
cuz she kinda looks like her).
We were next door neighbors for a few years when we both either worked part-time
or not at all and our children were young. At the time we both only had two.
Picture it - Hot Alaskan summer (well hot for AK), our husbands both working long odd
hours that left us mostly to our own devices, four kids that liked to play together and us -two
young,
ok mid-20 year old gals that were kind of bored and lonely. We hit it off like a
house fire! We hung out EVERY day and usually every night too.
The kids would run like the wild animals they were in her backyard while we did our thing.
Our thing turned out to be smoking cigarettes, drinking diet Pepsi and playing Scrabble.
Man, did we have fun and not only because we were playing the fantastically challenging
game of Scrabble either. The long in depth conversations about life in general, our problems,
kid stuff and everything in between formed a deep bond between us. We could talk about
anything that was on our minds without worrying the other would think we were dumb,
naive or whatever you worry about when you are young because if you'll remember we all
wanted to be liked and it killed us to think someone might think we were stupid.
And the summer flew by. We went to Goose Lake when the algae finally was cooked out of it, we got into
scrapbooking, shopping for
scrapbooking crap, making dinner together at night then drinking Corona Light on the back porch and before we were ready it was almost time for school to start.
Sometime during all this
Christy and her hubby (we'll call him Cook after Christy's ex who was also a schmuck) decided to look for a home to buy and they found it. All the way across town, just down the street from my brother and his family.
It was lonely after they moved and school started again because we couldn't get together as often as before.
Then that April 2002 my Hubby was able to transfer down here to WI and we moved.Christy and I stayed in touch. We talked on the phone several times a week. I was kind of her life-line/cheering section/best sunshine up the ass blower when her marriage fell apart due to her husbands drug problem (lots more to that story, but this is a blog post not a novel). The hubby and I even offered for her and the kids to move down here and stay with us while she got her shit together, but she stuck it out in AK.
After some pretty rough years trying to hang on to her house and taking care of three kids 99% by herself she met a guy back in 2007. He has two young boys and was getting divorced when they started dating. She was happy and didn't need me as much so our phone conversations fell off to just birthday's and holidays or when something big happened in our lives.
I've never met him or even talked to him on the phone, but my brother and his wife know him well and say he really loves her and is good to her and her three boys.
Yesterday was her fairy tale wedding. It was an outside wedding at a ritzy type golf club. I guess it had been a dreary day, but when they did their vows the clouds parted and it was sunny for a bit. My brother said it was magical.
I hope she is happy.
Wish I could have been there.