my b.f.f.

I joke a lot with Rick about his B.F.F.’s.  But I shouldn’t because my best friend forever is Canadian.  We have been friends since 1984.  Neither of us is really that old either.  Today we were discussing politics.  This is nothing new.  We discuss everything.  She’s a person I speak to often but speak about barely.  She’s like my extra invisible or phantom arm, always there, but no one can see it, yet I feel it constantly in my life.

When she and I began our friendship it was because of a Tiger Beat magazine.  Someone in my American Jr. High school submitted an ad in the magazine seeking pen pals.  Carla replied to my classmate.  The girl who wrote the ad got way too many responses and brought them into school and the English teacher decided to use them as a project.  That English project became my life long friend and eventual maid of honor in 2005 when I married Rick. 

Carla is much like me in that I believe I matter to her a great deal too, however neither of us gush to each other about our feelings.  On occasion I let something slip and it is received quite silently; however I have no doubt that she is just like me.  She, like myself, has few in person girlfriends and yet our friendship is consistent, strong and a life thread.  I love her.  A lot.

We started out writing massively long letters to each other. I used to write in a plain old notebook for weeks and then I would receive a letter from her, spend two days answering it and then mail my book sized letter back to her.  It was quite archaic by today’s Internet standards.

One night while feeding Keith (when he was a baby) in the wee hours I heard about a fire in her hometown of St Johns, Newfoundland on the television (CNN I believe) and I called her house (at 5 a.m. her time) in a panic wanting to make sure she was indeed ok.  I recall that her father thought it was quite sweet that I would call all the way from the states to ask about her safety.  At that point we had been friends for 8 years.

So…sometimes, like today, when we discuss politics and she includes links to things happening in Toronto, where she lives now, I am still in awe of how immediate our friendship can now be because of technology.  We can instantaneously connect and that’s a wonderful thing when I can remember being a 14 year old girl ripping envelopes to hear how my friend was.  I still sometimes pinch myself at the fate, the sheer luck, the magnitude of our friendship.  This year we will have been friends for 25 years.  Little else in my life has lasted that long, in fact outside of my relationship with my Aunt DeDe and my Grandmother…nothing has.

She emailed me this morning to talk about the inauguration….even though she’s Canadian. 

Through all my moves in life…I still have her first letter.  Through everything I have been through and all that I have lost, I’m increasingly grateful over the years, that I found her.

Here she is with her longtime live-in boyfriend Tim.  I love her.