reunions

Yesterday morning my kid crawled into my bed around 5 am.
And that is before you factor in daylight savings time.
I didn’t sleep so good after that.
My brain turned on and I thought about all the things I needed to get done and replayed a few conversations.

Yesterday, I met my old college room mate.
And even though I have hung out with her a half or dozen times since college and it has always been fine.
I had been kind of nervous.
And I often am when I visit old friends.
So I laid awake trying to figure out why.

First, me and this friend were always a little bit shallow. Or at least I was.
We laughed a lot. And drank our share. And occasionally stayed up late talking.
But it was usually about boys and clothes and high school and TV.
And in the end we were struggling a little as friends.
We were both spending more time with different groups of people. We were both about to graduate and getting more serious with our boys.
And most of all I worried that I had misrepresented myself and my God the 3 years we lived together.

I used to be great at keeping up with friends.
Even before facebook…I could write emails in minutes and used my car time to catch up on the phone.
But this friend never was. And it never really bothered me.
And even the parts I used to be good at all went out the window when I had kids.
So we have hung out a few times since.
And it wasn’t as easy as some friends where we could just pick up in the middle of conversations that we left off with years before.
But it has always been easy enough.
But there has always been beer or children to kind of act as a buffer.
And this friend has never been impressed by me.
She hardly knows I have a blog, much less reads it.
She lived with me long enough to know my all my tricks and flaws.
She doesn’t think I am nearly as funny as I do.
And she has seen me at my worst.
And my best and mostly just the me inbetween.

Those people scare me.

Because if our time together sucked.
She was rejecting all of me. Not just the funny obnoxious version most new people get.
Or the part of me that I chose put on line.
But the kind of intimacy you get from living with someone.
From taking out the other person’s trash.
From waking me up for class so I didn’t miss my final.
From hiding my keys.
From leaving my dirty dishes in the sink for days.
From seeing me through breakups and bad ideas.
From seeing my selfish and insensitive and sad.
And from seeing me dance in the living room.
And occasionally share my mac and cheese and scrape the ice off her windsheild.
Freshman to Senior year we lived life across the hall, and in front of the TV and borrowing each others clothes.

And I was little bit afraid that I wouldn’t like her either.
That we wouldn’t have anything in common and we’d just end up talking about potty training or something boring. And I don’t really want to remember her like that.

Instead.
We were laughing easily within minutes. Probably less.
And we may have not known every detail of each other’s current lives.
But she still knew exactly how I liked my tea.
And not to follow me into the bathroom.
And what kinds of clothes I would want to try on.
And we talked about plenty of nonsense.
And even some potty training.
But we tackled some pretty heavy topics as well.
Like marriage.
Voting.
And hurt.
And friendship.
And even the God that I was so afraid I had misrepresented.

And when we left we hugged and honestly wished we had more hours together.
Even with out beer.
And we were never really huggers, but we held on just a little bit too long.
And didn’t feel awkward about it for a second.
We won’t send long emails. Or daily texts. Or probably even remember birthdays.
And I’m almost hoping she doesn’t even read this.
But next time I won’t be nervous. Not even a little bit.