i’ll be your memory if you’ll be my song

when they began to sing, i shook like a leaf. i looked up at the moon and told myself, “focus on something, something other than them,” so that i wouldn’t cry. tonia and i promised each other we would not get sappy, but that pact went out the window when i stood there, watching one of my best friends, claudine, and her little sister serenade a yard full of smiling people. it wasn’t the first time, but it was probably the last in a long time.

claudine is moving to london on thursday. she’ll be there indefinitely.

“i have known her since second grade,” i told everyone and continued to recount stories about grade school and high school and college. how even then every other word out of her mouth was a song, how we got suspended in junior high for lying to our teacher about The Tennis Ball Incident and then begged our principal not to put it on our permanent record, how we were Dorks and then Cool and then Dorks again, how how she always passed out my number to random boys in college, how she introduced me to joel when i was 19 and the three of us ended up some sort of trio while we all lived in orange county.

i have to tell the stories, because she can’t remember anything before 6th grade. i piece back our childhoods for her.

so, we ate and drank and laughed under the moonlight. i watched claudine float from table to table, like a firefly. she was glowing, and i knew that i was sad for me but i was happier for her, because this move, this change, is good. and it is pretty amazing to have friends like her and tonia and joel, to see the twists and turns in our life and watch us grow.

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