Tonight I'm grateful for familiar driveways and roads I know by heart. I'm grateful for my high school best friend's neighborhood and the umpteenth time that I've gotten lost at night because I couldn't find her quirky mailbox. I'm thankful for old traditions -- like the cheap ice cream store, crawling with cheerleaders from my old high school, where a white vanilla dipped in chocolate costs you 2 dollars and starts to melt instantaneously. I'm grateful for memories of the past and inside jokes revisited. I'm grateful for parting gifts and heartfelt words and sleepy hugs, appreciative embraces that whisper "I love you, I'll be back soon." I'm grateful for misunderstandings and hurts that get washed away in floor-rolling laughter and meaningless banter, the sign of old friends who saw you through the SATs, the APs, the college years the heartbreaks and everything in between.
I'm grateful for the kind of friendship where you buckle yourself in for the ride and assume the other person is driving and don't have to ask. The friendship that bends and sacrifices late night sleep for a friend's room to be more organized. It's the goodbyes that are really "see ya laters," the houses you will never grow out of, the family pictures you always notice, the distinctive mailbox that catches the eye, the ice cream I eat because she loves. It's the moment sitting at the kiddy table that requires a picture, begs to be held in time -- the frivolity at 17, 19, 22 that never ends. It's the adventures and the goodbye cards and the late birthday presents and the few words that mean the world - "I'm sorry" and "I'll miss you" and "I wish I could pack you in my suitcase." It's the happy that endures continents of separation -- the friendship where reunions are sweet and get-togethers are one short of crazy and two steps past hilarious and the differences between us are so wide yet the love is wider. It's when the hours of driving in the rain for an afternoon of museums and photo shoots and gelato to celebrate a birthday are worth it. It's when the lack of communication is swept over by the familiarity and the honesty and the comfort and the feeling that just can't be replaced. The feeling of growing up together -- maybe not since the age of 5 -- but since the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed keychain-clad backpacked nonsensical high school era. Those years where locker placement and lunch spots and Friday night football games followed by Wendy's meals felt like all that were important. When everything was awful and wonderful at the same time -- like wearing pajamas you love but are too small, the ones you know will soon outgrow completely. Those days when you're trying to leave the messiness of childhood and heal the wounds of the middle school in-between puberty years and yet prepare for the rest of your life -- the end all, be all, those four years of college that determine … everything.
And here we are with college behind us, even more than a year past us, and while so much has changed, a lot hasn't, like pajamas that fit better but still evoke the fragrance of the bygone era of the growing up years. And it's in that moment when you begin to see what the older, wiser people have been trying to tell us all along. It's not about the goals and the college degrees, the high school pomp and circumstance or the first job. It's not how many shoes you have or how big your bed is or whether you're board certified or not. In the end, this whole ride is about the journey and finding the joy in each step, even in the mess and the beauty and the doubt and the questions. Maybe life is more about the quirky mailboxes, the goofy memories, the familiar driveways, the time-tested friends, the love that screams gratitude, the joy discovered in every corner of the box in the attic of the brain, the memories of the slideshow as well as the here and now. The here and now that ends up being all that we really have -- our only guarantee. It's these moments that breathe "wild and precious life," "throw off your bowlines," and "suck the marrow out of life." It's these moments we're so immersed in beauty and love that make us come alive. The "I'm so happy I'm here, lets do it all over again" alive. It's these moments I'm eternally grateful for.
