2004 Revisited: Birthdays, Journals, and a Vote of Confidence

Last night, as I stepped up to my wall calendar to record which medicine I took that day (because I am basically an 80 year old), I noticed that the next day--that is, today--is my friend Angie's birthday.  It is, of course, an annual event, so it is not some great revelation that there is a day in 2014 that marks the start of her next turn around the sun.  Instead, the greater realization was that this year marks ten years since we've met.  In other words, it's been a damn long time since we were Italy together, getting lost outside Venice or trying to surreptitiously take a picture of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.

To some of you, ten years may not seem like a lot for a friendship.  Keep in mind, though, that I spend half of my ten hour work day with people who weren't even born ten years ago, so my perspective is a little skewed.  That's right, friends.  Some of the kids I teach weren't even alive when Katrina hit.  This makes me somehow simultaneously hopeful and depressed.  Cheers to a better New Orleans!  I'll just go count my forehead wrinkles in the mirror now.

I don't have many long-standing friendships worth noting that pass the ten year mark--I met most of my close friends in college--but the few I have carry a special weight.  There's history there.  There's understanding and acceptance and an unspoken acknowledgement of things past, both shiny and tarnished.  My longest non-familial friendship is going on twenty years, and the best part about this elementary-era friendship is how easily we slide back into things when we're together, how easily we forget pretenses.

My strongest friendships are mostly long distance these days.  I suppose that says something about the global society we live in today and the power of social media.  I would like to say that Angie I would still keep in touch were we not on Facebook, but the truth of the matter is, one of us still owes the other a Christmas card from about five years ago (it's probably me) and it's looking less and less likely that the stamp will ever make it to the envelope.  Thanks to cyber communication, we still get to learn about the small things in each others' lives.  I get to see pictures of her baby and dog (both adorable), and she gets to read all the ridiculous (or sweet) things my students say to me in class.  Sometimes, it's hard to believe that we only spent two weeks together ten years ago.  Sometimes, it feels like it was just yesterday that I walked into an empty hotel room in Rome to a huge mess of clothes scattered around the room and thereby learned that I had a roommate for my tour of Italy.  Just thinking about it makes me laugh.  Little did I know at the time that I had just serendipitously stumbled into a friendship that would last ten plus years.

Angie and I hit it off pretty quickly, and we spent most of our time in Italy together.  I know this because college happens to be the one time in my life in which I devotedly journaled each and every day of every week of every month of every year.  I'm pretty sure I was planning on having a life so spectacular that would it would require a highly-detailed, multi-volume biography to capture the extent of my world-changing adventures.  Of course, the crate full of journals wouldn't help much, since most of the entries say things like "Settling into college.  My physics professor is awesome.  My calculus professor is from New Zealand, so her "f"s sound like "if"s.  She's really nice.  My Asian-American Fiction teacher seems cool, too.  My Judaic class seems like it will be informative, and the teacher is nice."  Apparently, three years of intensive writing classes and endless hours of studying for the SAT did not make even a subtle dent in my seventeen-year-old vocabulary.  Amazingly, this singularly-documented period of life also happened to be stunningly less dramatic and cool than I thought it was going to be.  Don't get me wrong, college was awesome.  But not exactly what I envisioned when I left home to strike out on my own...

"August 13, 2003

I can't wait until UVa starts.  I really can't wait to be able to go to parties and events and have boyfriends and make new friends.  I just love music and dancing, and parties will finally give me that chance, although I worry about being around a bunch of drunks.  The only thing I plan to do that might not be conventional is get my ears pierced a second time, right near the first hole.  Not in the cartilage; that seems like it would hurt too much.  I think two holes per ear, like I'll get it, seems pretty cool.  I'll, of course, take it out for church and when I come home, since my mom wouldn't like it.  I haven't told her I'm going to--and I don't plan to tell her.  She would say I couldn't and then I'd have to listen.  I have to plan the timing so that it will be more than six weeks until I see her, so my holes won't close back up again when I take them out."

Yes, as you can read, I was a rebel without a cause!  A menace to society!  A guilt-ridden teenager with a warped sense of the world.

It turns out, upon rereading these journals, that I also had absolutely no self confidence.  There's one point where I likened myself to the main character from My Big Fat Greek Wedding before the makeover.  Being a late bloomer is rough, guys.

By the summer I met Angie, I'd chilled out a little more and taken a self-loving step in the right direction.  While I never did get that second ear piercing, I'm pretty sure that by July 2004, I'd at least moved past the idea that God would somehow be disappointed in me for wearing four earrings to church instead of two.  She and I spent most of the trip side by side, taking in the sights.  There were a few times we split up (mostly when I refused to climb narrow, steep stairways), but we passed the better part of every day elbow to elbow talking about the guy she'd met in Madrid (Pedro) and Matt (a guy from UVa I was obsessed with)...or whatever else came to mind.

Here's us in Venice:

And somewhere in the Vatican: 

I grew up a lot that summer.  I learned how to travel alone.  I learned how to stand up for myself, and I met a lot of people similar and dissimilar from me that gave me a unique perspective on life.  I even bought underwear that wasn't cotton or from KMart.  (I know what you're thinking: wild child.)  It surprises me sometimes to think back on that summer and realize how far I've come and how much we've changed.  I mean, Angie's a mom, for god's sake.  On my end of thing, I'm almost 29, mostly sure of myself, and have finally learned how to evaluate my professors using words other than "cool," "awesome," and "nice."  Maybe I'll have my Big Fat Greek Wedding makeover moment yet.

Audrey Hepburn once said, "The beauty of a woman only grows with passing years."  Angie, here's to ten years of increased beauty and the memories of one crazy Italian summer.  Happy birthday, my friend!