friends since third grade

Today is May 13, 2010
It's Katie's 30th birthday.


When I moved to Maine, I was 7 years old. It was the summer before I started third grade. I didn't know anyone there and I was afraid to start school because I didn't have any friends. I also didn't know that I was living just down the street from someone who was about to become my very best friend. Katie and I both lived on Main Street. We were both in Mrs.Snyder's third grade class. We became fast friends. It's almost as if I can remember no moment that we were strangers. We met and we were friends.

We were best friends that played Barbies, rode bikes, listened to the New Kids On The Block, rollerbladed, played hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids and used pennies to buy taffy at Helen's candy store. In fourth grade we both decided to play the saxophone and we marched in the band together. There were bake sales in front of my house and a million sleepovers on my screened porch. We lived less than two blocks apart so it was easy to walk  to each other's houses. Not wanting to make the other walk too far alone though, we'd always make plans to walk halfway and meet at the corner in between Katie's house and mine. "Meeting at the corner" was something we'd do probably hundreds of times over the next several years. We forged a well worn path to that corner in between her house and mine.

In those years we dreamed of our futures and made plans to someday marry Joey Mcintyre and Donnie Wahlberg. Katie came to Illinois to visit me in the summers and I joined her family on cruises and weekends away and family reunions. She was a part of my family, and I felt very much a part of hers. We dreamed our big dreams, dreams that reached far beyond the borders of our little hometown, excited to leave Winthrop and all of its tiny town-ness, never stopping to realize that our big plans might lead us to distant places, places far away from each other.

And then they did. We marched to pomp and circumstance in the spring of 1998. Later that summer we said goodbye to our tiny town and goodbye to each other. Katie moved to Boston to go to college and eventually meet her husband, Jean, and I came to Illinois where I'd eventually meet mine. Even though we haven't lived in the same place since, we've remained the closest of friends. Distance separates us, but our friendship, forged over thousands of footsteps to meet at the corner over a half dozen years will always connect us. We share our lives now in the form of emails and conversations over the phone and through the exchanging of pictures.

Katie has an amazing faith in God. She has a godly husband and two beautiful children. Her faith has been an inspiration to me in the past year and a half as she has trusted God unswervingly through some very hard times for her family.

Katie, I am so proud to call you friend. I'm grateful for twenty-two years of friendship with you and very much looking forward to the next 22. I love you! Happy Birthday!