Some are Silver, Some are Gold

Amy would find this funny.

Having an old friend in town for a week was a balm I needed more desperately than I thought possible. Amy Weaver and I go back nearly 20 years [wait for cliche]. How did that happen? One thing I love about Amy (and her sister Jenn, who I've been lucky enough to see in Paris for the last two summers) is that we find the same things funny. Usually, they're born of things that we originally find quite serious. Both were patient, for example, to live with my "sculpture" under our spiral staircase, a cobbled together hat rack of sorts painted in 7 colors and hammered with various wood scraps. What ever happened to that thing? If I were to write a Match.com ad for friends, my dream friends would pretty much come in the package of "the Weaver girls" as they are known as affectionately in my family, both nuclear and extended.

Amy's stories are her own to tell, and so I won't parade her passages before you here, except to say that we've gotten a lot of mileage out of her long ago spell as an art-moving trucker, pushing 18-wheelers across the country... sorry Amy! Who do I deprive myself of these friendships for so long?

Her daughter Alice is the most delicious five year old girl I've ever met. Her flapper haircut and hot pink Eloise nail polish managed to lift my spirits through job uncertainty and tax season. Now I can't stand the thought of wiping away my chipped manicure born of her little hands, which she explained to me was not a manicure, but a pedicure. Despite her love of all things pink, Amy and her husband Bill haven't taught her the difference between a manicure and a pedicure, and that, coupled with her saucy chin-lifted scrunched up funny face tells me the world has another firecracker Weaver girl on its hands, only this time it's under the elegant Dorning moniker. I cried a little bit as I said goodbye on Monday. Walking away from Alice in front of Veselka on 9th Street, I said "Bye, Sweetheart," and for a half a block she shouted over and over again "Bye, Sweetheart! Bye, Sweetheart!" I know I'll see her before too long, but I also know how quickly they change. I'll forever be grateful to draw on her fleeting five year old self, whose Bye Sweethearts still ring loudly in my ears when I need them.