Two of my best friends are moving away. Far enough away that it will require planning and coordinating to see them and I suddenly feel like I’m in 5th grade again. When my bff at the times Mom moved her to another state and all felt lost. I remember the promises to K.I.T and the letters that we wrote. I remember her Mom driving down the shore to pick us up for a weekend at their new house in Pennsylvania.
I remember her new house not feeling the same as her old house where I spent so many Friday nights eating Dominoes bacon pizza and watching TGIF.
These days there is Facebook and Instagram and email but they really aren’t a replacement for a 7:00 am text message when you desperately need someone to talk you off the parenting ledge, and meet you for an hour of adult conversation.
It doesn’t replace the way I kick off my shoes in her house and curl my legs comfortably under myself as I curl up on her couch.
It doesn’t replace being able to text her 30 minutes before camp pickup to see if she can pick up my child because the baby just fell asleep.
It doesn’t replace the open invitation to come over or the way I know when my phone chirps at 7 am it’s her texting to commiserate. It’s the giant group text messages that have me putting my phone on silent because these girls can talk forever.
Facebook isn’t all of us sitting in someone’s basement eating chinese food at 11:00 at night and laughing at jokes I can’t repeat here.
And so much of it feels like I am 10 again. My thick rimmed glasses, my leggings, the book that is tucked into my purse and the ache that I remember so well from when my best friend moved away.
It’s all so different than it was then but it all feels so much the same. The hurt, the heartbreak, the feeling that I will never have a friend like that again, that I have no control over it. The ending of an era that feels all too short.
The other day I was driving Jack home from school and he told me how two of his friends are moving after the school year. And I asked him if he was sad and he said, “a little, but Mommy we will see each other when we are all grown up and I come visit”.
And a part of me wishes it was just that simple but I’m all grown up and your friends moving still sucks.
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