so, if i do a post about you ON your birthday do i still have to buy you a birthday gift?
of course i do. because gift giving is the thing that gives meaning to my life....
and i am so excited that i planned SO well as to be able to write about karen ON her actual birthday. except that it really wasn’t a plan... but i love it when a nonexistent plan comes together for me all “a team style”.
i met karen soon after we moved to dacula, ga. she and her husband, mike, (who is a christian sex therapist, how great of a job is that!??!?!) lived 2 doors down from our house. we moved in a few months before them. when they moved in i took over a key lime pie (homemade). karen hates key lime pie. that was not an auspicious beginning....
then when i was 876 months pregnant with millie (she was born 3 weeks after my due date, so i was pregnant longer than most humans but shorter than most elephants), i saw a “WELCOME BABY BOY” sign on karen and mike’s front door. now i had seen karen working out in the yard a week before and she was definitely NOT 587 months pregnant. i went over (WITH A BABY GIFT in hand) and when she met me at the door and i said to her (in a very excited voice), “did you adopt a baby?” she was a bit concerned that perhaps this 654 month pregnant woman was dismissing her choice of adoption... but i followed that comment with a hearty, “I WAS ADOPTED TOO!” and we have been best friends ever since then....
we went through those early years of motherhood together and that will bond you for LIFE. we have been through a lot of tough times together too. she and i have cried on each other’s shoulders too many times to count. sad tears, disappointed tears, frustration tears, tired and mad tears, and a lot of tears of joy also. and sometimes tears from laughing so hard.
our kids have been best friends too... my kids spend a week at karen and mike’s home every summer and then her kids spend a week with us. we call it the kid swap. it is GREAT (because adam and i have a week kid free!) and because it keeps our kids in each other’s lives. and it keeps karen and mike in my kids’ lives and i love the way that they parent and the way that they love my kids...
here is the best thing i can say about karen. my son, maxx, was napping in a pack and play in her closet one day while i was teaching school and he decorated her and her husband’s entire wardrobe with the only art medium that he had in the pack and play with him.... a product of his own digestive system... need i say more here... yes, he spread THAT all over the clothes in her closet, the pack and play, and himself.
and she still speaks to me.
she cleaned up the mess, started washing clothes, hosed maxx down in the tub and still has my kids in her home for a week every summer.
really, does that kind of sum up our friendship for you all?
now to be fair, i did do some nice things for karen (besides giving her a good reason to buy a whole new wardrobe). i introduced karen to scrapbooking and the joys of st. teresa beach. she will be forever grateful to me for both introductions. she loves the beach house and we love to be down there together scrapbooking and watching out kids play together on the beach (and locking them out of the house so we can scrapbook the photos we took of them last summer playing on the beach, it is kind of a vicious cycle)...
she came and spent the last three nights of my mother’s life with our family in the hospice house. karen had been a hospice nurse (now she is a school nurse) and her being there with us was an incredible blessing for my entire family. i do not know if we could have gotten through those difficult days without her bedside manner, her incredible knowledge of hospice work, and her constant loving support (and teasing me about my snoring while i napped on the hospice couch).
i cannot image my life without her sage wisdom, problem solving skills, and listening ears. she is one of those friends who i can be totally honest with and she is totally honest with me. we can call each other out for attitudes and examine our true motives... without ever fearing that we will be judged...
But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself. ~Frances Ward Weller
Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his. ~Benjamin Franklin
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~Plutarch
that is the kind of friend that karen is to me. she always points me to the Truth in any situation. she takes whatever digestive product that i happen to be spreading around like art and she cleans it up and smiles and washes her clothes and goes on with our friendship. that is the kind of friend every girl needs....
