dinner tonight

I had dinner tonight with one of my best friends. Really, "best" is not the right term, but tonight it is the word that comes to mind, because that's the word I used for her when I was eight. I had dinner tonight with the girl who lived across the street from me in elementary school, who sang the same songs and sold the same lemonade as I did. We played in each other's yards and ate each other's snacks. And we were allowed to ride our bikes anywhere, as long as we went together. I had dinner with her tonight, and I swear I could have been six years old again, sitting on the roots of a plum tree, acting out whatever book one of us was reading. Or fifteen, legs swung over the edge of a ditch, full of angst and jelly beans. She is in every single memory - and many of my pictures - of grade school. We had dinner tonight for the first time since we left home, and I nearly told her every secret I know out of habit. It was the strangest, sweetest feeling, to be so connected to someone I barely know anymore, to see pictures of her children and ask about her family. I wish you all a dinner like this, when you can sit until the restaurant clears and tell all of your stories and remember what it's like to be eight years old and have a best friend.