Looking North

photo credit

 

"The North Star or Pole Star – aka Polaris – is famous for holding nearly still in our sky while the entire northern sky moves around it" (Earthsky.com). 

Take a minute to think about what your childhood looked like and how your life started out, and then compare it to your spouse's childhood, or maybe that of your closest friends. We move through life and experience this world on such a random trajectory, it's sometimes astonishing the people we manage to find and pull into our orbit. And our beginnings are so very different. Like with me and my best friend of 26 years, Karen.

The title of this photo is obviously "Come hither" or maybe 

"Everyone needs to rethink their hair and belt choices."

My childhood started off with multiple moves around the Midwest, before moving on to Utah, Wyoming, southern California, and New Jersey. I grew up on canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, dehydrated mashed potatoes, and when we were lucky, homemade biscuits with sausage gravy. I wasn't well traveled or sophisticated by any definition, and at 16 years old if you had asked me to point out London on a map, I could have gotten you as far as England, but then would have shrugged my shoulders and said, "London is probably somewhere in the middle?"

My friend Karen lived her entire life in the heart of London until she decided to serve a mission for our church and moved to Ireland at 21 years old. Karen is a city girl. She grew up on prawn flavored crisps (still gross, btw), liver and onions, and watered down, fruit flavored juice called "squash." When, at age 16, I ended up in the same Sunday School class with Karen and her sister Beth, I thought everything about them was sophisticated. They knew all the train lines and buses. They knew all the shops, and where to buy great clothes, they knew what to do when shady guys catcalled them on the street (I won't repeat their colorful responses in case my teenagers are reading this), they knew all the best places to eat, and where to go dancing on the weekend. These were London girls. 

Trying on my dress for Junior Prom. 

Side Note: My dad was out of town for the actual prom night and when he later asked to see the dress, I insisted it was a rental and I had already returned it. That felt like the better option than showing him a one strap, waist revealing prom dress.

In the end it was geography and our shared religious background that put Karen and I in the same room. Honestly, at first there wasn't much else. Karen wore D&G knock off sweatshirts, a Posh Spice hair cut, and more jewelry than Mr. T. while I still shopped at The Gap. (Keep in mind it was the mid-nineties, so think wooly mules and overalls). Our music didn't line up. Our food preferences rarely lined up, especially since Karen has always been a savory girl, and I want all the dessert. And of all the incongruities, one of the most polarizing was our school experiences. I attended a private American school, whereas Karen attended an inner city London public school that didn't have doors on the bathroom stalls. Even though we only lived a mile apart, the culture, pressures, and experiences of our life in London were worlds apart. But every day after school Karen would come over to my house, in fact most days she was already lounging on my bed reading a magazine by the time I got home from school. From three o'clock pm until bedtime, our worlds lined up perfectly.

In the twenty-four years that followed, there has always been some version of what I just described. Karen has always been a constant, bright fixture in my life. But instead of me coming home from school and finding Karen hanging out in my room, soon I was coming home from college, and she was waiting for me at Victoria Station. She even came to visit me once when I lived in Paris, and brought along her then-boyfriend. It was a pretty fabulous weekend, complete with a memorable and aptly named version of "Killing Me Softly" at a Karaoke bar on the Champs Elysees. Unfortunately, Karen decided to break up with her boyfriend halfway through the trip, which resulted in lots of tears (on his part) and me sleeping in between them on the floor of my one room, hobbit-sized studio apartment.

Tintern Abbey, Wales

When I moved back to the United States, Karen came every single year. It's relevant for me to add that at the time she was just a student with hardly any money, scraping together every last cent in order to afford those trips. When I got engaged to Jeremy, she came again, but because the wedding was in late December, she could only afford a plane ticket that arrived before Christmas. She missed Christmas with her family in order to be at my wedding. 

My Instagram history is filled with the travel, games, and holiday celebrations that I have experienced with Karen and her family over the past two decades. Not to mention all of the amazing food centered activities, such as our Chopped Championship, Chocolate Tasting Party, Christmas Cookie Baking Contest, Trifle Cook Off, and Root Beer Tasting Contest. Through all of this our friendship gradually evolved more into a sister relationship. Some years she visits two or three times, to the point that my children have become surrogate siblings for her son Parker, and we all look forward to her husband John's baking as my kitchen gets used more when he's in town than any other time of the year. (However, please note that I won the Trifle Cook Off, not John!).

As teenagers we never tried to define or imagine the longevity of our friendship, it just gradually unfolded and over the years our families have organically merged together. It's not always perfect. At least 70% of us tend to get hangry if we go longer than four hours without food, if Elle is required to walk more than two blocks her legs will spontaneously begin to hurt, and it takes me approximately three hours to get all of my kids fed, dressed, and ready to go for the day. Plus, Karen's son Parker is accustomed to a much quieter, more ordered household and we are completely chaotic and loud 98% of the time. Oh, and once in a blue moon John and I both might act like opinionated divas, but Karen and Jeremy are pretty quick to sort us out. It's a regular source of hilarity that Karen and Jeremy are so alike in their calm and steady nature, necessary complements to the high energy that John and I both bring. 

The dynamic of our combined personalities creates a surprisingly compatible puzzle. One important factor is that everyone helps. We all do dishes, help kids find their shoes, load the car, and take turns cooking amazing food. Okay, that last one's a lie. John does nearly all the cooking. But in every other way we all contribute, and we've come to expect and even enjoy the challenges that come from throwing our families together under one roof for multiple weeks each year.

Both Karen and I have other friendships that mean the world to us. People we simply cannot do without. I have friends that know exactly what to say, what to order, who have given me the best advice and shown up for me through thick and thin, and helped me pick my area rugs. Karen has these people in her life too. But there is something magical about sustaining a friendship across the globe for more than a quarter of a century. Sometimes we wonder what it would be like if we lived a mile apart, and then we remember we already did that. I'm sure I'd come home from grocery shopping to find Karen reading a magazine on my couch. 

Geography has always impacted our friendship. It's why we became friends, and it has made a substantial hurdle in remaining close through the years. There are days when it is incredibly hard to have Karen so far away, but even the Atlantic Ocean can't inhibit our friendship. I remember back in early 2017 when I became incredibly sick. Within a couple of weeks Karen was on a flight to Chicago. I didn't ask her to come. She has a full-time job and her son to take care of. But I didn't need to ask. While my kids went to school and Jeremy went to work,  Karen spent a week lying next to me in my bed binge watching Hallmark movies and ordering take out. We hardly left the house, we just talked, napped, ate, and watched tv. To this day, that remains one of the most tender memories of our entire friendship. It was a reminder that it doesn't always have to be glamorous trips and three course meals, mini golf and waterparks. Although we were an unlikely match, we grew up together, developed our faith together, are raising our kids together, and we both love a good cheese board more than anything. But most importantly, no matter how wild life becomes, I know that Karen's friendship, love, and loyalty are absolutes. To me, she is Polaris.

Karen is forty years old today. It's a COVID birthday, with all of the canceled trips and crushed birthday dreams that that implies. However, I reminded Karen on the phone the other day that even though COVID has taken so much, it cannot change how people feel about each other. It cannot change the fact that in her quiet, un-showy way, Karen endures as one of the best human beings on the planet Earth. So for your 40th birthday, Karen, I wanted to give you my words. I wanted everyone who knows me to know how an unassuming London girl became part of my life and changed my trajectory forever. Happy Birthday!