In the year of our Lord 2009 I was reunited with an old friend. Janie and I spent our twenties going out dancing at clubs (we were total rave queens, maybe even rave ninjas) and then I kept on having babies and working and Janie ended up being our nanny. We loved saying the word “nanny” because she came to our house but we were, by no means, well off enough to have A Nanny. Janie even did the laundry and sometimes started dinner for us and I encouraged her to teach the children Spanish. More than anything, Janie became a friend to me and we weren’t employer-employee. It never felt like that. She became a friend to me in a new town where I didn’t know a lot of people. We started playing sand volleyball together, we lamented over relationships, and we shared clothes like sisters because she’s my one friend who is tall like me. We’ve even vowed to visit her native Puerto Rico someday but I fear we would never return from it and then somewhere, on the side of a milk carton, our faces would show that we were missing. Our tanned, happy faces.

This year, after about ten years of not seeing one another or speaking, we met once again. This is the part that gets fuzzy for me: I can’t remember for the life of me why we quit speaking. There was nothing that happened, no scandalous my-hubby-humped-the-nanny story line, no argument that lead to us to stop talking and calling each other. It just stopped. It’s a sad thing when that happens because once you pass a certain time limit then you begin to question, “Why hasn’t she called me?” and “Well, crap! Why haven’t I called her?” and then you just let it go and too much time passes. But I’ve learned that’s not true. There’s no such thing as “too much time” passing. If you get a chance, then take it. Janie and I took it again and I got to be her friend once again during a relationship, an engagement, and a wedding.

I haven’t given up on love yet. Honestly, I haven’t. But in the past two years it’s been hard to attend weddings and see happy couples just embarking on that journey. 2009 brought Janie back to me and let me be really happy for a couple. Her new husband is being deployed to Afghanistan next year and they invited me to his Going Away Party where he spontaneously sang to her. In the background there is my other new friend from this year, Patrick, who DJ’d her party and played the BEST salsa music to which Janie’s aunts taught us all to dance.

I only wish you could see more of her face here. For that matter, I wish everyone could see her heart.

Damnit. They’re so cute.

It’s nice to finally be really happy for some people in love again.