My Real Life

I have a few people that are the absolute loves of my life.  Real Man and the monkeys are obvious, however, there are three other people who have been continual loves of my life.

Kim, Erin, Michaela and I have been friends for 30 years.  I am the only child of two only children and therefore, my friends became my family.  These three women have been the most consistent presence in my life since I was 8 years old.

When I was 8, my Dad left the church he had been preaching at to a new church in a different town.  We moved in January, days after my 8^th birthday.  So, not only was I the new kid, but I was the new kid, mid-year. 

On the first day I went to my second grade class in my new school, I turned around to the girl sitting behind me and said, in my toughest, badass 8-year old voice, “Where’s the scissors?”  Erin pointed to the scissors and quickly became my best friend. 

This is Erin:

She is absolutely beautiful, inside and out.  She’s brilliant and funny and I’m sad that she lives a few hours away.  She is currently staying at home with her two sweet little girls and working at Bloomingdale’s on the weekends.  Prior to raising her family, she was a bigwig accountant for a variety of different companies, including Ernst and Young.  She’s awesome.

Not in my second grade class, but in my Brownie troop, was another girl.  Man, could this girl network.  Even in second grade, she could work the crowd, networking her way around the elementary school.  Everyone knew who she was and I, too, soon fell under her spell.  As we got older, Kim also became a best friend.

This is Kim and Erin and I:

No surprise, my networking friend is now the National Account Director for Yahoo! and lives in the city.  Kim is strong, independent and just fabulous.  She always makes me laugh, and I’m not the only one.  A few years ago, she won 10 stand-up comedy lessons at a Yahoo! benefit auction.  The class ended with the students doing stand-up at a comedy club in the city.  If you’ll pardon my language for a moment, Kim’s routine kicked ass.   She seriously needs to do more of this. 

Michaela and I met when we were little, but didn’t become best friends until middle school.   She sat behind me in Algebra and instead of taking notes, we’d make up stories and draw pictures and pass notes.  We were inseparable for quite some time.

This is Michaela and Erin:

Times are never dull with Michaela.  She had a wandering spirit as a kid and she still has it today.  She’s the most creative person I’ve ever known.  She’s an artist, photographer, and creative genius.  As an adult, she’s started her own company, Briefcase to Backpack, as well as a website that sells her art, Wanderlust Productions. 

These three women and I have been through everything together.  Pigtails and Brownie troops to youth group and church choir.  First cars, first accidents.  First boyfriends, first broken hearts.  We’ve hugged each other, we’ve slapped each other.  But always, we come back to each other.  We’ve traveled together with our handbell choir, visiting Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Canada, Bermuda and a variety of other places together.  In our senior yearbook, students had the option to buy a senior page that they could fill with pictures and memories.  The four of us had to buy two pages and still had to leave hundreds of memories out.  We’ve been through marriages, parental divorces, childbirth, and every other experience you can imagine together.

Real Man often comments how rare it is to have one friend who you’ve known for 30 years and still remained this close with.  Make it 3 friends and you realize that your luck is overflowing.  These women are more than family to me, because I’m not stuck with them.  You can never escape your family.  They are a part of you through blood.  These women are my family by choice, and to me, that is ever so much more special.