If Friends Had Wings..

“From now on our reunions will be at weddings”

How on earth did we get to be this way? Marriage? Really? Did we grow up that fast?

It’s days like these with cups of coffee and Milo coursing through my bloodstream that I have epiphanies. You reach out for friends you knew when you were young, when you were twelve and still eager at the thoughts of sleepovers, summers and prom. Today a stayover means unfinished work, holidays mean internships and a night in a dress and makeup is just another night.

It’s been a while since a foot-long essay arrives in my mailbox about your big big plans. You with the goldfish eyes and headphones, how did you grow up so tall? You with the soft squishable cheeks, how did you get to be so sad? I love listening to your big dreams: thoughts of settling down, PhDs in obscure subjects I’ll try to understand, odd passions as a filmmaker, applications to medschool, GREs, MCATs…

Do you know how much I have loved the people that you were, still adore the people that you are and so excited for the people that you will become? No? Yeah I’m not very good at telling the people that I love that I love them. There’s not a lot of things I can do from here with the awkward time difference but I hope these snatches of words will do for now, temporarily. There’s a reason why you are part of a legion of the niftiest people that I know.

Secretly, I don’t know what my big dreams are. Rather, i haven’t chosen to pursue them earnestly which is why I love listening to you. But you, you, you, you and you remind me of the person that I was, the girl with really odd ambitions who can’t seem to sleep at night, who spends endless afternoons inside the drama room, who takes model united nations too seriously, who comes into student council with an iron fist, who wields her perfectionism for our unread student magazine and who actually loved her English class (which most of you loathed). That girl. Where is she?

“Stay 12, don’t grow up, it saddens me!”

Somehow i’ve forgotten all of that for the last two years. Is that growing up? I’ve changed for the better and for worse: softer and tougher, yielding and quiet, affectionate and evasive, patient and inert. I’m trying to piece her back together, taking the best parts of the past before I feel even more…. lost: adrift on a pea-shell boat and feather sails. That pretty much sums up the last three years we’ve been apart.

This deepavali I attended a simple church wedding. It was my first time and the first one where I knew the bride and groom personally. You know, I’m not the kind to cry in public. Anyhow, I was tearing up, not bawling because heck I’m not that bad.  The thought that lingered was that I would be in the pews (because let’s face it none of you will have it inside a mosque) watching you with the boy or the girl that you love…. and I would be so happy for you. So so so happy. I might be bawling too. See how much I’ve changed?

As for me? I’ll be patient. I’ve built quite an enormous store of patience from placing my hope in all the wrong places. Half of university life and I’m still fairly unscathed. But if I could love you this much, if I could love myself then the odds are pretty high that someone could love me in the same way. That’s just my guess. I just have to trust that they will come unexpected. I just have to stop looking for them – especially in odd places – restlessly talking to strangers. That’s a strange little habit but I derive a kind of odd amusement from them. Oh there are other stories I’ll never tell… not without a bowl of mango and tartufo gelato.

I know some things may change forever. We won’t be able to talk everyday. We won’t have the luxury to while away our afternoons with milo peng, carrot cake, duck noodle, prata and mcD’s until dusk comes.

But you know where to find me. I know where to find you.
I’ll find you. You’ll find me. We’ll find each other through static and distance.

That works don’t you think?

That’s what matters.