I wish you could meet my best friend. My husband just returned home from work. It’s a nightly ritual – it operates like clockwork. He walks in the door, and I walk out. It’s not that we don’t get along. Far from it. He knows I have an appointment. It’s the same appointment I have had every evening since I was five.
I see the steam rise off the top of my coffee mug. I hold the mug tight in my hands for the warmth. I walk over to the porch swing, and I sit down. In less than a minute, there she is beside me. Annabelle. Every night since we first met in kindergarten, we share the twilight.
There I was, this scrawny little redheaded, pug-nosed kid. It was the first day of school, and I was in a new town. I was friendless. My coloring page laid before me on the desk. I reached in my box for the blue crayon, but there was none. Something caught my attention, and I looked up. Sitting there across the table, she smiled as her eyes met mine. She extended out her hand. Inside it was a blue crayon.
Ever since then we were inseparable. We had slumber parties. We had birthday parties. If there was a reason to have a party, we threw one. We talked endlessly on the phone, laughing. . .sharing secrets. We were close. We still are.
“So, did it go today?” she asks. She knows the answer.
“It was fine,” I tell her anyway. “Good day. Got most everything done. Yours?”
“Much the same,” she replies.
In spite of our growing up together and being so close, we really couldn’t be more different. I always had my head in a book. She was always surrounded by people. I was Yearbook Editor. She was Co-Captain of the Cheerleading Squad. It astounds me to think of our differences, for they are many -- but in that cool, crisp twilight, we are almost indistinguishable.
“Did you get that story you were working on?” I probe.
“Not yet,” she says. “I still have some fact-checking. The deadline is Friday.”
Ironic how life turns out so different. I, who was voted Most Likely to Win the Pulitzer, am now married with three children. Miss Most Popular is now fully devoted to her career with the town newspaper. We certainly have come a long way; we have changed greatly. Sometimes, though, I need her advice with my children, while she looks to me for an angle for an occasional story.
“I know you’ll do well. You always do,” I reassure her. She mouths a word of thanks.
After all these years, we have learned that nothing is constant. Nothing stays the same. Most people would be scared by that, I think. We aren’t, though. We embrace it. We thrive in change. I think – no, I know – that’s because we help each other. We are the one constant in each other’s lives in a world full of variables. I don’t know what I’d do without her. It’s that simple. Everyone ought to have such a friend with which to share the twilight.
The screen door creaks open and my husband steps out. He walks over to the swing where I sit. Taking my hand in his, he sits down in the empty space beside me. I wish you could meet my best friend, but you can’t. She was aborted by her mother, barely more than two months from conception.
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