Lucy

"I don't know how you can still be friends with Lucy. It's so irritating and rude when she does that to you."

But we were seventeen. And seventeen is young, and sometimes seventeen forgives or doesn't care. Or seventeen really does care but doesn't want to cause drama. Or doesn't quite know why seventeen hangs on.


And now we're a little bit older and a little bit wiser, and maybe Lucy can't be the friend who can cry with me every time I am sad, and maybe Lucy can't be the friend who can come to my rescue at three am when my car won't start. But when I saw Lucy today in the airport for the first time in three years, and we closed the gap of three thousand miles, the first thing we do together. . .

we laugh.

We laugh hard. Like there was never any time or any distance. Like we never exchanged a cross word. Like feelings have never been hurt.

Rachel never did get over that incident. They never bonded. Rachel will never understand why I love Lucy so. They both are such dear friends to me.

And in this time, when so many I have loved have chosen to let hurts overshadow the friendships we had, and to end our great adventures without ever giving a reason (though I have my suspicions), and when the whims of romance come and snatch away the best friend I thought I ever had, and when babies are born, and parenting is understandably demanding, and some friends unfortunately are buried, and some move even further away, and some just disappear in this age of technology. . . Lucy still laughs with me.

We have had ups and downs, but our friendship isn't subject to moods. We have troubles, we get depressed. but mostly we laugh. And laughter is the best medicine. And no matter how sad I am, and no matter how much I hated everything going on, and no matter how much we disagree, we just laugh and my soul feels so alive. And I remember that friendships are all so very different. And I am so blessed to have a friend like Lucy that those few times we talk, she listens, and is so understanding. We can talk about how troubling our lives are without making it sound at all depressing. And for that, I absolutely love her. No friend is perfect. But Lucy is really special.