For Jordin

I vote left; she votes right. I am a pacifist; her husband is in the military. She eats meat; I'm a vegetarian. We have different parenting and discipline styles. We approach people and situations in different manners. We have different things that we're good at.

Sometimes we talk about people we know and muse about how odd it is that this or that couple of friends could be so close, given how different they are. And then we always have a laugh at ourselves and imagine that people must say the same thing about us.

The two of us are very different, it's true, but Jordin has taught me about a whole new kind of friendship:
A friendship with no obligations. A friendship that doesn't keep score. A friendship without competition. A friendship that makes you want to give because of all you have received.

She has taught me how to be open with someone on a whole different level. I have never had much problem being open with my feelings, thoughts and ideas, but she has taught me how to be open with my time, my space, my things, my life.

Driving home from our holidays at the end of December, it hit me that I was heading back to Kingston and that she would not be there. We will always be friends, but not having her physically close to me anymore leaves a gaping hole in my life.

Driving home from our holidays, I thought back over our friendship of the last four years or so.

I remembered our trip to Ottawa - staying in one little room with four children and walking all over the city for nearly a week. I remembered apple picking, berry picking, canning tomatoes and making salsa and sauce together. I remembered making pies, apple sauce and apple jelly in the church kitchen and Jordin putting out the fire when the jelly overflowed into the burner. I remembered cleaning her house with her and her helping me clean mine. I remembered dying yarn together. I remembered the trip to Ottawa with just our two babies, visiting all the yarn stores we could find. I remembered all the walks downtown, trying to keep our six children nearby. I remembered calling her up and asking if she could take my kids in five minutes, possibly for the whole night when I had to go into the hospital at the end of my third pregnancy. I remembered watching her kids when her youngest had to be rushed to emerg. I remembered her regularly offering to take my kids for the afternoon so that Jason and I could be alone together. I remember all the times she prepared meals for me, both in my home and in hers. I remembered going through our third pregnancies together, helping make each other's belly casts and being at each other's births. I remembered her husband telling the nurse that she could not send me out of the delivery room because I was his wife's heterosexual life partner. I remembered watching movies on her couch and sipping tea in cafes and eating Indian mung bean dessert in my living room late at night when our babies were all asleep. I remembered putting August to sleep for his nap in her bed every other Wednesday afternoon. I remembered crying on her shoulder when my marriage was in bad shape and her crying on mine when she thought she might lose her daughter. I remembered all the times she had a good, practical idea when I couldn't figure out what to do. I remembered the hours we spent sitting together knitting. I remembered having nothing to do but laugh when our children decided to wash each other's hair and flooded her bathroom, or the time they decided to make "smoothies" out of all her make-up, or the time they drew all over the bed sheets with markers that didn't wash out, or the time they ripped a hole in Jason's huge stuffed lion and had little balls of styrofoam all over the second floor of my house. I remembered crying when I found out she was going to be moving.

And now, the move has happened. She is living in a big, beautiful house that I would love to be able to spend much more time in than I know I will. At least, I tell myself, she's still in the same province...

I know I'm being sappy and sentimental, but I miss you, Jordin!