I Hope You Dance

8/30 on Day 13.

YA'LL!!  I am lagging!

Anyway, most of us in the #500WordsADay group are not entirely sticking to it, so I feel justified.

I started this month writing about my precious Anna-Boo, and I am going to address her again in my re-entry to the fray.

She tagged me in a FB post about her son Nick's 18th birthday and totally unraveled my heart.

I was in the room with her when that little human - big human now! - came into the world.

She was my Assistant Manager, my best friend, and my favorite face or arm to lick in pictures when I was drunk in the clubs in Portland in the early oughts.

Being in the room with her when she gave birth was an awesome honor, a super scary prospect, and a really intense experience.

I won't traumatize you by going into the horror stories that my insane family told me about their own childbirths, but there was apparently a lot of cursing, yelling, and refusing of marvelous things like epidurals.

48+ hours of excruciating pain and taking it out on nurses and doctors, blah, blah, blah, GROSS.

Fucking kill me.

My Anna did none of those things. 

She was, like, this super zen Madonna (not the performer, look that shit up) and the whole process was amazing, primal, and absolutely something that I pledged to avoid at all costs moving forward.

SWOON

Like, the Dr. brought out this HUGE mirror so she could see what was happening with Nick as he came into the world.

Meanwhile, I was cringing next to her hip, looking at her face so as not to see what was going on below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Soooo, my friend had a baby.  

I mean, she already had 2 children - Sassy Kels and Sunny Devin - but I wasn't in the room when they were born.  

I loved those kiddos as much as I loved their mom and little "Nit", which was what Devin called him at first, but we always are drawn to babies, aren't we?

(Not my 2 daughters, which is why the day I spent today watching Eldest's dog was the same as spending a day with a grandchild - more on this tomorrow!)

Anyway, I loved that baby.

"And she loved a little boy very, very much..."

I loved hanging out and watching American Idol and eating the amazing dinners John cooked for us, holding my boy, listening to Kels and Devin ramble on and on in little-kid talk.

That all ended when my Anna-Banana took her 3 babies and fled to Oz, leaving me with a severely dysfunctional cat named Bob, and I never saw them again until Facebook became a thing.

Friendships are a blessing.  

Like, you meet someone, make them your person, and refuse to let them go. 

Other friendships go away.  Like, they no longer serve either of you so you let go and move on and barely remember how you became friends in the first place.

This is not me and my Ann.

She lives in Australia.

I live in Vancouver, Washington.

We don't have a lot of mutual friends.

I haven't been in the same room as her in YEARS.

Our lives our so different.

Our hearts are the same.

Ran into each other on NW 23rd on a Sunday.  NBD.

She sends me Tiktoks alllllllllll the time, because she knows exactly what is going to make me laugh my face right off my head.

I write blogs about her, declaring my endless love for her to the point I am sure when I finally fly to Oz (thoroughly anesthetized on Chardonnay and - hopefully - with Samantha letting me break her hands during takeoffs), Shane will deny me entrance to their Huntsman-infested house and I will end up sleeping in my rental car in the driveway, or a tent that John lets me put in his refurbished front yard.

I am so glad we are still friends.

We will be friends forever.

One of my favorite movies, two of my favorite actresses, three times we finna roll up on Melbourne like...

Even though her childbirth was not enough for me to NOT get knocked up and produce another human - something even Jeff (fuckface) Bezos doesn't have enough money for me to repeat - I think she is the bees knees.

The cat's pajamas.

The top.

The Coliseum.

(I would say the Louvre Museum, but I think I might be liable to pay some royalties if I did, so I will say she is the National Dinosaur Museum in Canberra, which I hope to visit with her.)

Anyway, I say all of this to say that there is a newly-minted adult in this world who has no idea that I used to hold him in my arms and wrap his tiny, trusting baby hand around my finger while I looked at him and loved him and wished him all of the good things.

Happy 18th Birthday, Nick (Nit), I am still wishing you all those good things from 17 hours away.

Cheers.