Last night we hosted an interesting little soiree. It was a going away/birthday party for one of the best friends I have ever had. I feel the need to emphasize this point by adding …in my life at the end of that sentence because Tammy is so very important in my life. She’s a fellow educator and we met at college many years ago. Now, I feel the need to add …many, MANY years ago to that sentence because looking back now I realize how long ago it really was. (Incidentally, she’s the friend I mentioned in this post who organized my entire bathroom linen closet when I moved in a month ago.)

Me, Tammy, and Monica. They are both so tiny that they make me look like a giant standing next to them.

Trying to make new friends after high school is hard enough to do when you go away to college, but trying to do it with a 3 year old kid in tow seemed nearly impossible for me since I couldn’t party and go to keggers every weekend like everyone else. (Right? Is that what they did? I don’t know.) Tammy made it easy for me and we were inseparable at school. We both finished college at the same time, but she later transferred to the U of I which was about 45 miles away from EIU where we started and then came back to Springfield to begin our teaching careers together at two different high schools here.

Three years ago, Tammy came to me and said that she had to finally get out of this town. She’d grown up here and worked here and left only for college. She’s well traveled, though, as a history teacher and takes students to Europe on a regular basis. She got so many students to sign up one year back in 2003 that the company she went through gave her a $1,000 stipend for spending money or a free trip for someone. Tammy called me and invited me to go but I insisted that she take Mallory, who was a high school sophomore, instead because I knew I couldn’t afford to send her at the time and that I’d take my own trip to Europe someday. For those keeping score, I haven’t gone yet. Tammy was, without a doubt, the only person I trusted to take my child across the ocean.

Tammy told me she wanted to move to Hawaii and get a teaching job there. Three years ago I nodded my head and dreamed along with her, sighing the whole time. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Two years ago, she told me again that she wanted to go and I could see that she was getting more serious about it. Last year when she told me, she asked me for a letter of recommendation. “Well, shit. You’re serious, aren’t you?” and then she had a Skype interview this year with the school administrators and got the job. The woman who interviewed her called me at my office one day to ask more questions about Tammy’s ability to do this and I gave her another glowing review and it was so incredibly hard knowing that my best friend could get this job and leave for Hawaii. I know she won’t be coming back.

Tammy loves her cherry pie. I mean LOVES.

I decorated the whole house last night for a Luau and made sure all guests wore a lei. After a lovely dinner of pasta alla carbonara, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce and her favorite, a cherry pie, I stood up to give her a speech:

Twenty-some years ago I walked into a lab class that almost all college Freshman have to take. We had a lecture part and a lab part for this class. Maybe it was Biology? I don’t know. (I looked up at Tammy and she rolled her eyes and said, “Life Science. Ugh. I hated that class!”) But we were on our own to figure out the materials and complete the labs. It was a sink-or-swim course.

Luckily for me, in walked Tammy. Shyly, she asked me, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and “Do you have a pencil?” We teamed up from that moment and tackled the labs. She wanted to know what floor I lived on in Carmen Hall, the all Freshman dorm that new college students had to live in. That’s when I told her about Mallory and explained that, because I had a child, I had to live in the Married Housing apartments on the opposite side of campus.

Stories that Tammy can tell you from this time include:

1. When we became Alpha Phi Alpha ‘sweethearts’ together.

2. Not carrying Mallory across the campus like I did because she said, “I’m no sucker like your mother, girl, you know how to walk! You’ve got two legs!”

3. Trekking across The Tundra from her dorm to her classes.

4. Babysitting Mallory for me when I needed to go to class or the library or to write a paper and when I came to pick Mallory up once and found that Tammy’s entire floor was out in the hallway with crayons and coloring books so they could all color with Mallory.

5. Eating homecooked meals at my apartment, and…

6. Introducing me to and FORCING me to please call this guy who liked me and would later be my husband and ex-husband. (Tammy sheepishly looked up at me during this part of the speech and mouthed the word “Sorry” to me.)

Later, she would just solidify her place in my life as my best friend. She never forgets my birthday, she shoots me straight and hard with the general bullshit of life, and she encourages me to feel like I’m worth all the good stuff in life. She let me confide a secret to her when we met as 18 year olds about placing Maddie for adoption and she was the first person I called when Maddie found me.

I let her confide in me about her own adoption and the complicated relationships with her two mothers. (This is a rather bizarre story from when Tammy was 16 years old and accidentally met her biological mother at the hair salon.) She let me dare to be great. I watched her greatness soar to become Horace Mann’s Educator of the Year.

I held her when her mother died. She held me back because it took so long for me to find out and make the trip from college to see her. She is an aunt to my children. She is opinionated and won’t take shit from anybody. Her concern for people isn’t always easy to see unless you’ve been allowed to reside in her heart. After twenty plus years of friendship I know where in her heart I live with her.

We toasted her after that. To Tammy. Thank you for your friendship. Then, of course, there was lots and lots of crying.

As usual, partygoers invade the kitchen at a party. I bought this house was for this reason.

She is married to an incredible artist, Shawn, who has to stay here on the mainland for 4 more months until their dogs are cleared to leave for Oahu since it’s a rabies-free island. He is a great guy who loves and adores her and I have vowed, along with our friend, Monica, to take care of him with meals and packing until he’s ready to leave since Tammy leaves tomorrow to go and find a place for them to live and get ready for the upcoming school year. One of my prized possessions is a painting by Shawn entitled “The Mighty Acorn” that he gave me after seeing all the artwork hung on the walls of their house.

It makes me happy to look at this painting. Plus, it’s yellow and I love that color.

I now have a really good excuse to go visit Hawaii and have promised myself that Europe can wait, once again. That’s not regret talking. Naturally, it’s one my bucket list of things to do someday, but now I have set my sights on Hawaii because my best friend will be living there.

Aloha and mahalo, Tammy. You will be unbelievably and sadly missed in our daily lives.