Missing.

Tonight I am especially missing my best friend. She has been my best friend since we were in kindergarten. We were two little girls with one heart... She the brunette, I the blond. She the meek and acquiescent, and I the schemer who's flighty ideas have been known to land us in trouble. Aged pictures show us cheek to rosy cheek, hair mussed and shoes untied, smiling toothless grins and dragging Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls behind us. Scarce are my childhood memories without her in them.
Our sleepovers would usually end up with me tickling her feet and making her laugh so loudly that my dad would sternly warn us several times to be quiet before making me go sleep with my brother instead. We would spend lazy summer days watching movies over and over or playing in giant mud sinkholes at the lake. We complained about our brothers, cried over the death of pets, and sang as loudly as we could in the back of the van. We would invent our own recipes and attempt extravagant culinary masterpieces that on occasion ended in flour fights, wasted ingredients and irritated mothers.
I remember the day after church when she asked me about Jesus and we sat on the beach and talked about salvation. We were only 10 and yet my heart soared knowing that she would be my best friend in and for eternity.
I pulled out some of her teeth, and she was there the day I fell off the playground set in the backyard and a fire engine and ambulance showed up at my mom's garage sale. We chattered about boys and new clothes and thought we were hot stuff being dropped off at the mall for a couple hours alone.
My family moved away and our friendship was condensed to a week or so together each summer. We wrote letters and called, and then for a while we chose slightly different roads that thankfully, eventually entwined again.
We didn't get to go to Proms or high school football games together , but every time we got together after months apart, it was like no time had elapsed at all.
I remember the exact spot I was curled in on the floor in my college rental house that rainy evening when I saw her number calling on my cell phone. Instead of her normally bright and cheery voice, I heard anguish and absolute grief on the other end of the line. The next morning when I stepped out of the car after fighting tears the entire drive over the mountains, I saw and embraced a broken version of my quietly strong best friend. I didn't know what to say. If I may admit it, I still don't know what to say. I cannot understand what she went through in losing her father so tragically, all I could and can do is to open my arms and cry with her.
We stood at each others sides for our weddings and held each others hands when both of our first children entered the world. We sometimes complain about our husbands and hurriedly catch up on each others lives while making supper and balancing a phone on our shoulder and a baby on our hip.
Somewhere along these growing up years, we have felt a space seeping in between our hearts. All the focus that used to go to each other has now been spread to husbands and babies and buying houses. We sometimes speak to each others voice mail more than we do to each other.
I wish I could drop by her house for coffee in the morning, or meet her at the park and let the kids play while we chat, or push them around in strollers while we shop. I wish I could see her all the time and that the space that's ever-growing from life's quickly changing circumstances would fade away and let us be. I even wish at times that I could go back and have back those lazy summer days baking concoctions and living life through the eyes of Barbie. How I know I would cherish them now.
I am grateful for my best friend and the unspoken security that we have in each other. Each of us knows that the other would walk out on the President if the other needed a best friend moment.
She is a constant for me, a safe place to be utterly myself and the sister of my heart I believe I will always have.