Happy and Sad Endings

Today is a bittersweet day for me and lord knows I like both bitter and sweet. Carter had her last final exam of 9^th grade, and we had our annual last day of school lunch with Campbell and Hannah Hannan. Carter and Campbell have been in school together for eleven years. I will never forget the day in the first month of their being in Pre-K that they approached me together and said, “We want to have a play date.”

I looked down at cute Campbell who was almost a head shorter than Carter and said, “Great, what’s your name and who is your mom?” Little did I know it was the beginning of a life long friendship for us all. That was the sweet part of today.

The sad part was I had my goodbye visit with my friend Donnabeth, who is moving to Dallas. The fact that Donnabeth and I are friends at all is proof that there is some higher power. We met, I think, in 2007, at the Clear Creek Ranch in Burnsville, NC when Russ, Carter and I went for a few days and were put in a room next to Donnabeth, her husband Barry and their son Josh who is three years younger than Carter.

Since we were the only families of three we ended up sitting with them at all our family style six-seater meal tables. Quickly we discovered we were the oddball families as we laughed at the same things that no one else found funny. As luck would have it they lived in Cary and realizing that they were fish out of water there they sent Josh to school at the Duke School and eventually moved to Chapel Hill.

We did not live in the same town, our children were not the same age or sex, our husbands did not work in the same business, we were not involved in the same schools, charities or religions but we became fast friends. If I were Jewish I would be Donnabeth and if she were a gentile she would be me. We both love food, theatre and the absurd. Somehow we were meant to meet and become friends.

As life does you have friends that live close by and then you have ones who are spread far and wide, but they are still your friends. You don’t get to go to lunch as often, but that does not mean you can’t still talk about the crazy thing a neighbor did or kvetch about something happening in the news.

I am sad today to say goodbye to Donnabeth leaving North Carolina, but as she says, Dallas is a great place to buy a new smaller wardrobe. Like Carter has been friends with Campbell almost her whole life I am sure I will remain friends with Donnabeth forever, but that does not mean I am not sad about her moving today.