these things I want to say

I'd like to tell you all about this trip, but it's hard to know exactly what to say. I have stops and starts and do-overs that have repeated in an endless wheel and still I am sitting here, wondering where I should begin.

These are fantastic women, these girls I call my friends. They have met and married some equally fantastic men and have, in turn, begun an entirely new generation of Cream in their children.

We were sitting in our hotel on Wednesday night, doing our level best to scare Samia's lovely Joe right out the door (with the LOUD! and the STORIES! and the HAND GESTURES!). I told him that I realized a while back that the only way any one of us was ever going to meet and marry someone would be if we were sent packing to the far corners of the world. The three of us created an inpenetrable world of laughter and tears and deep conversation that no else could possibly enter.

In some of my deepest darkest moments I have pined for their shoulders to cry on.

In some of my most joyous moments I have wished for their shared happiness.

In some of my quietest moments I have wondered over their thoughts.

And I've missed them.

But life has a way of wiggling through the cracks in our shell and pressing our memories apart until we are left feeling an incredible sense of quiet gratitude for the past we've had - and a yearning for new challenges in our future. This to say that with every year that passes, I have wondered if our friendship would be the same. The miles, the distance, the time, the individual experiences we each have had, the places that we're in at this moment--- these things make us different than we were yesterday.

As this trip rolled closer to me, I worried more over the changes that I feel in my heart more than the memories I once created with these incredible women.

Yesterday we drove down to the Old Mission district in Santa Fe. There was a small dusting of snow falling from the sky as the three of us pushed strollers and talked in that chattering way you do to a small child (Yes, look at the tree! Do you see the car? Do you see the yellow car?). We wandered through stores and around beautiful brown buildings. It was in those moments that I thought about this friendship and what it's weathered so far - the time and distance, the weddings and births, the disagreements, the long talks, the differences in personality. Yes, we are different now. Yes, we have had trouble and challenges in each of our lives that the others could not carry. There have been times when we have driven each other crazy. There have been times when we have made each other mad.

But I know that I could ask them to come to me if I needed them, and they would come. I could ask them for honesty and they would give it to me. I could show them my faults, my failings, my spirit's pale underbelly and they would still love me. Inexplicable, unexplainable, indecipherable, but still - and forever more - constant friends.