An ode to splitting pastrami sandwiches
We were babies in DC, in our bad Steve Madden heels and suit jackets, on smoke breaks, splitting pastrami sandwiches, heading straight to happy hour, and not eating dinner until too late.
Now you pick me up from an echocardiogram appointment with sparkling water and madeleine cookies from the middle consul of your car snacks, take me to your house before the kiddos pick up, feed me homemade spam musubi from the large Tupperware, and pour me a glass of white.
"I feel like these are lyrics in the making," you text.
"This might be my poem to you."
I text back.
And almost 20 years of friendship.
To a friend who shares her name with my mother.
I share the name of her sister.
My brother shares the name of her husband.
A friendship built on a suit jacket.
I was new to DC and out of grad school. My third east coast city move and last for my tour out of the great state of California of one year that turned into seven.
I didn't have one yet before an event, and you offered me to come over, eat dinner, and borrow one of yours.
Cosmos and TJ's Indian food.
Grief was a connector from the beginning.
Experiencing it as younger people.
I knew when I left your apartment, I had a friend in this new city as I made my way to U Street back when the majority of businesses were still Black owned, and folks lined up to flip off Bush's (#2) motorcade.
We shared an office- one of the only offices I have ever had a door on it.
We would bring coffee, bagel egg cheeses, and a vegetable once in a while as offerings.
I would close the door and lay on the floor.
We worked together on advocating for raises during the day and negotiating if a make-out could be more at night.
We had our emergency supplies of makeup, tampons, clothes, snacks, and probably some condoms.
We drank a shit load of Diet Dr. Pepper which I don't think I have ever had since.
Our boundaries for life and living were the paintings of preschool finger paint.
It made a lot of sense only then and it was beautiful and messy.
Work and play.
There was a lot more faking until we made it than not.
Fearing to admit it.
We moved from our office to happy hours to your backyard patio, but there was a moving together in unison that only exists in the teens and 20s.
For that time in your 20s, when you are supposed to know a bit more, but are still figuring it out.
We are still figuring it out, and we are more willing to admit it. And no one is faking it now.
You gave me a notebook to write in for our first birthday dinner.
You taught me how to talk to the press a bit better, the importance of acai liquor in your homemade cocktails.
And eating more of a snack as you made dinner and how to make a tofu scramble and the best dive bars in DC.
Hangovers and heartbreaks and layoffs.
We used to get ready to go out at 9 or 10.
Now we chat around the table or couch until then, saying, "Oh, wow, it's late.”
And you make me a bed or your husband and (also my friend) will drive me home.
You have told me truths I wasn't ready to hear. And I am sure I have to you.
Some friends know you really know you and show up for everything, not just the good parts but the fucked-up parts, the scary parts, the uncertain ones, the long and short ones.
The ones where you know, even if you don't see them all the time, they are there.
There there.
In our 40s, talking through kids+ parenting, work, our own aging, aging parents, relationships, and our shared love for the grocery outlet and all deals and sales.
I get to love your kids, and they get to love me.
One of the greatest gifts of the pandemic was living close to each other and spending more time with your family.
Beach days.
Running in the water with little little hands.
Kiddos teaching me how to scooter better on the asphalt.
Dinners when I had dinner with no one else.
Chatting over our meat and cheese and veg pre dinner snacks about making sense of the pandemic and politics and how we were going to make it through this unknown and that one.
For a friend who shares her name with my mother–
We split our pastrami sandwiches when we were figuring it out.
And to now be old enough and brave enough to say we still are.
Figuring it out.
Out loud and
Together.
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Beautiful capture of a long friendship
Thank you. Decades long we learn so much together 🍀🥪