"I know I'm who I am today because I knew you"

So I've been waiting for weeks for these pictures to appear in my email inbox.  Anya had to go away to Costa Rica or something crazy boring like that and she forgot all about our pictures...or was it that she lost her camera cord in between her packing and unpacking her storage unit between trips to Ghana and the Netherlands and around the world again?....seriously now, what's really important here?!  :)  I guess she was just waiting for the perfect day.  Today came.  Perfect.  :)

The three of us were close friends from elementary school all the way up through high school.  We all went to different colleges and stayed in and out of touch but have been able to get together a few times since I've moved here.  Catching up has meant so much to me.  Goodness, the memories I have!...from studying our art history books aloud while pretending to be Sister Wendy....we performed a funeral service for our textbooks when we finally passed that AP test (I think that had something to do with that my brother had just moved an organ into his room and we had him play for our services...it was the perfect mortuary setting)...to the decorated lockers on birthdays, the happy notes slipped on car windshields and in each other's backpacks...Cancun, Yosemite, the Interact club and Rotary luncheons, tap, clowns, Proms, Ragtime and Odyssey of the Mind...  we really were great at being nerdy... okay, and I'm afraid we still are!  I love that that hasn't changed!  When I look back I see how protected I was by being surrounded by such great girls.  We're all of different faiths but they kept me faithful.  So in the spirit of our Broadway musical fanatacism (not sure if that's a word),  so also in the spirit of making up words and pretending that we're smarter than we are,  I think the Wicked witch of the West put it nicely when she said of Glinda, "I know I'm who I am today because I knew you."  Friends leave their mark.  I'm a better person because these friends left theirs.