Long Enough

We traveled to Boston Took planes and trains and automobiles

Dragging Disney princesses

on rolling suitcases

behind us.

Ariel got her chance to

stroll along down a --

what's that word again?

Airport concourse.

We could only stay in Boston

for four minutes.

Four minutes was long enough to

see our two friends become one

Long enough to get our glasses readjusted

(dorks)

Long enough to swallow the

unmistakable

New England October air

and to look up at the mirror ceiling

of the hotel where

a young man asked my father

on the same weekend

seven years ago

if he could put up with

my motion sickness and

broken eyeglasses for a lifetime.

Seven years later,

my husband twirled me on the dancefloor

to Michael Buble

our flower girl daughter pouting

our angel son sleeping in the lap of Uncle Greg.

Later we would consider

passing by

our Boston real estate

where we brought home two

babies brand-new,

real estate now occupied by

some unsavories.

But then I thought how

I didn't want to spend

these four minutes in Boston

looking back

casting our life there

as some man that I had loved

but knew I could never marry.

I've had my fun/ But baby I'm done I wanna go home

*** Our host, sweet Maggie

...and her baby sister Louise (not pictured: Louise's twin bro Calvin)

FamiLee

Flower Gal waiting

Tater waiting

Jeff waiting

Lo! The flower gals arriveth

Lo! Eunis arriveth

 

Hard out here for a flower girl

Mercy. I miss Newbury St.

Kicking off her shoes for dancemania

Eunis + Jeff = 4 eva

Empty

One of the best parts about being an RA in college is also one of the worst things. And no one can tell you or warn you out of it. You just have to go through the good (total apex high) and the bad (deep, valley low, so deep that no cellphones receive signals). You experience it first in the fall when you are fresh from training, armed with pristine door decorations and a bazillion and four ideas for programs. You are so ripe for meeting your ruddy-faced residents.

The rooms of your floor are all open, the floors are the cleanest they will ever be, and each open cellblock speaks of the real learning that will transpire here, nevermind the textbooks and lab reports, it is here where the hearbreaks and breakthroughs will go down, all of which you will experience, albeit sometimes tangentially, simply because you are RA. In loco parentis.

This is the best. But this is also the worst.

Because the same emptiness that was so pregnant with promise then in mid-August is the emptiness that you will meet again in May. When all the door decs have been defaced and discarded. When all the rooms are once again vacant. You will see the ghosts of your residents and hear the echos of their cries and their laughter.

And you will be left behind.

I know college has been over for a long, long time for me. I know I am no longer an RA. And thank God because drunk people pushing shopping carts up and down stairwells? Not as hilarious at 3a as they once were.

But I can still feel that emptiness. Like all of my residents had come for an extended stay in the hotel of my heart and then had ceremoniously checked out at the same time. VACANCY.

If there is one thing I hate, it is being left behind. I am a firstborn. I will try everything first, I will do everything fast. I will drop you off at the airport but then I will go do something fantastic just so I can feel that while you are readying for take-off, I will not be the one waiting back at Terminal A.

I have said goodbye to so many friends leaving Boston. But this time, I will not be left behind. And that is also the worst part. With each box packed, I am reminded. We are leaving nothing behind....

***

Fall 1999. Sophomore RA. My residents Kate and Leah snuck up and took this photo. They couldn't believe I wore that ugly coat in public.

'Hood

If you want to beam me Judy Jetson-like over to your house, you should text me multiple times while I'm at church petitioning me, "Can you be my hero? Huge favor!" and then call me and ask me to come over to watch your daughters while you go bring something to your neighbor who is in the hospital. That's what my dear friend and sweet neighbor Sierra did last weekend.

She asked me to come over by 3:45 p.m.

I was riding so fast with Baby Girl on the toddler seat of my bike, you could hear da-dump-da-dump-da-DAH-DUN, I was Mrs. Gulch pedaling fiercely against the din of reggaetone over to Sierra's. I reached her driveway by 3:42 p.m.

When I arrived, the scene was not at all as I expected.

Her daughter C was riding her trike. Sierra was totally at ease, like I had just arrived at a backyard party.

Oh wait.

Why is my friend Anna and her family following me up the driveway? Did Sierra frantically call everyone she could just to come help her with this neighbor hospital errand help thing?

Oh, wai--time out. Wait, what? WHAT?

Oh.

I seriously have the bestest friends.

***

The next four hours was a curtain call. Assorted cast members from This Is Your Life: Boston entered from stage left and stage right. Many wonderful cameos by many wonderful people.

Mid-way through the night, the following photo was taken:

The gravity of this moment, in an e-mail to Sierra, et. al.

As I stood in the backyard of my friend Sierra's last night, stooping down for a picture with all the neighborhood kids, there was another crowd that seemed to be posing for a picture. So many of my Boston friends converged in that same backyard looking back at the kids. Like two Red Rover lines Care Bear staring one another down. My young friends, my golden friends, friends who have seen me on my darkest days. Friends who brought me homemade food when I was wearing a veritable diaper in the hospital after having a turkey lifted out of my womb, friends who prayed for me, friends for whom I prayed, friends whose children I would run into a burning house to save like they are my own.

If you've made it this far, bless you. In short, I thank you for your love for me and for my family. I am so much poorer than that girl who had cab fare in 2002, but infinitely richer in love, laughter, and indomitable spirit. I hold you all close to my heart, tucked under a pink feather boa. I am honored to call you my friends.