Happy Birthday, Anke.
      Shannon.
      Crozzie.
      I know you won’t ever read this, but I want to wish you the happiest 34th Birthday anyway. I sent a card. A dorky one, but the thought counts, right?
      Sometimes, it is very hard to believe how many years it has been since we sat in the same room. I still imagine us, very much as we were in High School, chattering about all the inconsequential (and the life-altering) things we always talked about. I still imagine us going to Family Reunion together, even after we were too old for such things, until we one day took our husbands and kids up there. I don’t know why – after junior year, we never went back to FFR together and I’ve never met your two beautiful boys. I have none of my own, just Venna and Mark.
      It is a weird thing, life.
      If I had ended up at WWU with you, would either of us have graduated? Would I now be a Middle School English teacher with five little rugrats of my own? Would you be a lawyer, sophisticated and sexy in sharp suits, arguing all manner of cases to change the world? Would I have finished more novels, and published them? Would you have named your firstborn Krishna Bati or Rory?
      I imagine you feel much the same as I do. I wouldn’t change a thing about my past, because it got me to where I am and I would not give up an instant with Mark (and yes, stinky little Venna) for all the money or anything else. But sometimes, the mind cannot help but wander.
      It can be difficult to reconcile the people we thought we were back then with the people we’ve become. I never would have guessed, sitting around laughing in your Dad’s basement, that today I would be a degree-less, child-less, published-novel-less wife in Pennsylvania. I never would have guessed, back then, that you’d have two boys in Texas, with Jesus proudly stamped on your heart the way it is.
      Life is weird.
      So is this post.
      But the important thing is that no matter the distance and the time, I will always be your friend. The Ushi, to your Anke.
      Happy Birthday, Shan. Wherever you are, wherever you go.

Note: Image is “Confetti 2” by (ba1969) from SXC.hu