To my kids, she is Aunt Katie. She’s been that since the congratulations gift she sent when Carter, our 10-year-old, was born. She signed the card Aunt Katie, and it just seemed right.
To me, she’s been a nearly life-long friend. We met in kindergarten, but our friendship didn’t start then. We lived in the same neighborhood, but we were an unlikely pair. She was curls, frills and all girl. I was a big-wheel riding, tree-climbing tomboy.
We were in Brownies together, and we were not friends. We fought often. One day, when we were about 8 years old, the tension boiled over and we were ready to throw down in my driveway. She called me an a_ _hole. And even though I was the tomboy, I was scared of her.
I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way, in fourth or fifth grade, we came together, and once we did, we were inseparable.
I can’t even count how many hours we spent together. In the summer, it was all day, every day. I jumped on my 10-speed and cruised to her house and I stayed there all day. We made extravagant breakfasts and divine lunches. Her house always had the better food supplies. I ate Little Debbie snacks by the box full. And she always saved the Doritos for me. Oh, I love Doritos.
We shared clothes, and she tried her hardest to help through my years of bad hair days — as hopeless as they were.
At 16, her parents took us to Daytona Beach. We had our own room, and we had the time of our lives. We'll just leave it at that.
In high school, we traveled in different circles. I ran track and cross country. She was a cheerleader and dated a football player from another school. Our friendship was different, but still we were there for each other.
Today she’s the friend I call first when something goes right. She’s also first to know when life gets hard. She was nearly the first to know when I was pregnant, the first friend on the list to call when both of my children were born. And she is the friend that will honestly tell me if my “butt looks big.”
She moved to Tennessee about five years ago. When she told me, I cried. I worried about our friendship. Would it last? With husbands and families, would we find time to talk and stay close? How would we see each other enough?
I’m not sure why I ever worried. I think back to the day we almost physically fought each other, way back in second grade. We hated each other with a passion. But since we found our friendship, we’ve cared about each other just as passionately.
It’s the kind of friendship I want my own children to experience — to find that forever friend.
Tomorrow, I will fly with my daughter to visit my BFF in Tennessee. It’s a girls week. Her husband is working out of town. So it’s just me, her and our daughters: Six girls, together.
We’ll do our best this week to be role models, to show our daughters the meaning of true friendship: Being there through it all, ready to laugh together and pick up the pieces, too. With a bag of Doritos in hand.
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