What Best Friends Are For

Published in The Broomfield Enterprise, 10/21/07

I’d like to take a moment to thank my best friend for her 23 years of service.

Over the decades, her importance in my life as a woman, wife and mother, has become blindingly apparent. She fills a void no other can, standing by me during all those curveball moments in my life, helping to catch, deflect and, at times, take a hardball on the chin for me. And when that curveball socks me right in the head anyway, and throws me for loop, she is always there to comfort me.

We talk often, as best friends do, sharing funny stories and daily moments that run the gamut of simply foolish to shockingly dumb. So, it was no surprise that I, after a particularly stressful day with my three children and eighteen kindergarteners, picked up the phone and dialed her number to confess an ugly moment in my life. The conversation went like this:

“Hello?” she answered.

“I have to tell you something I did.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, for dinner, I had salmon, steamed broccoli and brown rice.”

“I see.”

“But then I was still just so hungry, so I had a bowl of vanilla ice cream.”

“Hmmm. There has to be more.”

“Well, I added a spoonful of fluff…and a spoonful of Nutella.”

“Still…not too bad.”

“And some M & M’s.”

“Go on…”

“And then when I was done, I still wanted more sugar, so I had a few more M & M’s.”

“And this is where is gets good…”

“And then I guess it still wasn’t enough, so I went to the bowl of candy I brought home from the pre-school party.”

“The one that 18 little hands had already sifted through?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“Please continue.”

“Well, there was mostly sour gummy worms left, which I won’t stoop down to eating.”

“We do have our standards.”

“So I gathered all the worms and put them in a baggy. And there lay the fruit of my labor in the bottom of the bowl.”

“Did you just say ‘fruit of my labor’?”

“Yes. In the bottom of the bowl. The remaining M & M’s. Chocolate love buttons.”

“Did you just say love buttons???”

“Yes. Love buttons. But they were covered in the sour gummy sugar crystals.”

“Well, that just won’t do.”

“So I used my hand as a sieve and shook off the excess powder.”

“But how did you wipe the rest of the sour taste off?”

“With the bottom of my shirt.”

“Ah.”

Silence.

“So. How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like I’m going to throw up.”

“Well, there’s always tomorrow,” she encouraged.

“I’ll call you the day after Halloween,” I said.

“Not if I call you first,” she commiserated.

Time and distance can sometimes get in the way of remembering to tell our loved ones how much they mean to us. So, I’d like to take this moment to thank my best friend. For filling the void. For comforting me after the curveballs. And, mostly, for being the only person with whom I can use a term like “chocolate love buttons” and still, always and forever, be my best friend.