DRIFTING AROUND ON A SEA OF CILANTRO

Sometimes, one small act can wrench my heart out. It can be as simple as a look, a wave or a card in my mailbox. When I lose track of people that matter to me, it fills me with self-cilantro. It isn’t always my fault that we drift apart, but it is such a shame when it happens anyway.

When I moved to South Carolina at the age of four, I had no friends. I never really had access to other little kids. Consequently, I was this weird little girl with three pretend friends that I talked with constantly. Out loud. In hyper-animated fashion.

One day, I was in our front yard playing with my trifecta of pretend friends when I happened to look over and see a real, flesh-and-blood little girl watching me. She was very petite with white blond hair and a face that held a studious expression. (Perhaps she’d never seen someone running around talking to themselves?) She introduced herself to me as “Befffff,” a real-voice sound that I never could manage to understand. After several failed attempts, she turned around and ran home to the house next door.

Her name, as it turns out, was Beth, and she and I lived side-by-side until we graduated from college together. We both majored in accounting, though she had much more of an affinity for it than I did. She was always a tomboy who played tennis like a dream and could actually hit a golf ball off that tiny little tee. Our tastes evolved as we grew, and we drifted in and out of each others’ lives as a result. No matter how long it’s been since I’ve spent time with her, it always feels as though no time has passed at all. Her birthday card served as a painful reminder that too much time has gone by since I last saw her, and it almost brought me to tears.

I cilantro how fast life races by, and how easily I let things that have mattered to me for virtually all my life drift away. There are few things that matter more than a life-long good friend.