less than a week away.

On Sunday night, Cathy left me a voicemail that said, in its entirety, “We’re less than a week away!” The best words ever.

Approximately one million years ago, in 1987, Cathy and I were in 10th grade and preparing to spend two weeks that summer traveling around the UK with her mother’s orchestra. That year, we sat next to each other in European History, and one day we decided to write a countdown (i.e., all the numbers starting from however many days we had left, “189, 188, 187…”, all the way to “1”) on the tab divider page for the class in our big blue binders. Every day in class we would cross off another number. (Mondays were exciting, because we got to cross off three numbers to cover the weekend days.) Finally, after school was out, we got to less than a week away, and for some inexplicable reason (because we are silly and often make otherwise ordinary things silly), it became a catchphrase for us. Ever since then, whenever there was some kind of big event we were involved in together, trips where we would be seeing each other, getting to “less than a week away” became a Day of Importance and Noteworthiness.

1987: on our way to the UK

The only good thing about the fact that she lives an entire continent away from me, in the San Francisco area, is that I get to stay with her while I attend the ITMI program. It’s honestly hard to say which part of this trip I’m anticipating more: the fact that I am about to take the first Really Big Step toward this new career, or the fact that as I am doing it, I will be spending more time with my best friend than I have since college. (When I called her on her birthday over the summer, her older son, who is 7, got on the phone and exclaimed “I haven’t seen you in YEARS!” The last time I saw him, he had just turned 3. And the younger one doesn’t even really know who I am, this Aunt Liz who occasionally sends him sweaters, because I haven’t seen him since he was 11 months old, and now he’s 5. Which is, by the way, the age Cathy and I met.)

So we are less than a week away, and I could not possibly be more excited. I am excited to spend time with my longest friend, to talk and catch up and giggle like mad, because that is how it works with us. I am excited to get to know the walking talking thinking people her baby boys have become. I am excited to wake up and find out just how crazy they make a house in the mornings.

I am excited to have her back in my day-to-day life, even just for a little while.

2009: reunion weekend

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