“now our blood flows through each other as it is done for all eternity, loyal forever; we raise our voices in the words of Mumbo Gumbo … YAYA!” (vivi ~ divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood)

(photo by duke)

this photo was taken august 2007 as jen and i were saying good-bye at the ferry terminal. she looks luminous in her tears, i look a mess but it was such a heartbreaking moment. we thought we would have more time to say good-bye but the border/customs gates shut behind them while duke and i were parking our car so we didn’t get to say good-bye to the rest of her family but jen boldly dodged the security guard and came out … there were tears and sadness and so much we still wanted to say. duke quickly snapped off some shots of the two of us before they made jen go back behind the gate.

we have a beautiful friendship, the kind where you start talking and it feels like 10 minutes have gone by but the reality is your cordless phone is beeping because you have been talking for five hours, blink. i can’t even begin to tally how many hours we have logged but its a good thing for our pocketbooks that i have free long distance calling across north america. honestly, it feels like we have known it other forever even though the first time we ever talked was mid-april 2007.

the thing is, she is the friend that you call when your heart is breaking, when the world is falling around you, when you receive the best news ever, when you are so happy all your body wants to do is dance. when we met for that first time in victoria, it was so easy to slide into each other’s lives, drinking coffee together for the first time as though it had been done hundreds of times before. my son who has never met her face-to-face steals the phone from me to tell her his good news and my husband has been known to take the phone and gab to her for a good hour on occasion. she is my best girl friend and just saying that brings tears to my eyes because i know in my heart that we will still be talking out our hearts when my head is completely silver.

but its been hard. because there are times when you wish you could just pop over with that homemade chicken soup or a gerber daisy or why can’t you just hang out in the backyard and drink a glass of wine and stare at the stars. and go shopping together and have an ikea date day and go on a photowalk and just hang out and see each other’s expressions while you talk. i don’t have to tell many of you how hard it is to have your best friend live so freaking far away and add a border and it seems even further. we have tried a few times to do a trip and for this reason or that, financially, it just hasn’t been able to happen. we were going to drive down this summer, the three of us but the situation of shooting weddings made this an impossibility in terms of time. i can’t tell you how much heartache the two of us have had over not being close enough to actually get together on a semi-regular basis.
so. you can imagine how freaking excited i am to be flying there in just over a week’s time. i have my shiny new passport and my shiny new smile and butterflies in my stomach. i will be leaving my country for a week to spend 24/7 with my best friend. there will be coffee, talks, photos, shopping and even a trip to ikea just because we can! and as an added bonus, i will get to meet liz and maddie as they will be staying with us for a couple of days ~ what a fantastic way to celebrate my fortieth birthday. oh my gosh.

a secret: i have never been on an out of country trip all by myself. when i was 18, i traveled with my mom and my grandma to go to a family reunion (my mom was born in america and was american when she had me). when i was in my twenties, my husband and i drove to wyoming to visit our favourite couple friends (he was doing his phd there at the time) and that’s it.
on the cusp of turning forty, here i am nervous and excited to be going off on my very own big adventure. i do think that this is the start of something and i have to tell you, shhhhhh, sometimes i pull out my shiny new passport and i marvel at the empty pages and get excited and dream of all the places that i have dreamed of going to and am so grateful to finally be in a place where i can start making some of those dreams a reality.

best of all ~ in just 9 sleeps i am going to be able to hug my bestest friend again … uh huh, there will be tears!!