20 Year Friendship

20 years is a long time yet the time has seemed to fly by! Tammy and I just went out to celebrate our 20th anniversary of being friends (yes, that is a bathroom stall in the background....the restaurant was too dark for my cell phone to take a picture. I need a better cell phone!)

A few weeks ago I called up Tammy and told her in a husky voice, "I want to go on a romantic date night with you." Most people would have probably reacted by saying, "What?!?!" but Tammy just laughed. She knew exactly what I was talking about.

We ended up going to Toro Tapas. Yeah, I know, I just went there but Tammy wanted to try the restaurant and I was more than happy to head back. We shared the yummy cheese and fruit platter (We probably had a pound of cheese. Yep, we'll be 'clogged' but it'll have been worth it), the stuffed portobello, the chorizo stuffed bell peppers, and the cranberry nut tart for dessert.

As we sat there we reflected on how much we've been through over twenty years. Tammy pointed out that we have known each other more than half of our lives (depressing thought that we are that old!) We met our first year of college at Buffalo State. By coincidence we were in two classes together our first semester. We laughed that I taught Tammy how to skip class. We would skip our morning sociology class and go out to breakfast. Even better, we skipped an afternoon to go shopping when the Galleria Mall first opened.

Although Tammy began dating her husband only a few months before she and I became friends, she saw me through the boyfriends of my past. She tried to talk me out of dropping out of college and cheered me on when I returned years later. Tammy and I have been through engagements, weddings and ugly bridesmaid dresses. We both experienced new home builds. We have shared ceramics (ugh, remember that?!?) and scrapbooking. We have shared struggles with trying to get pregnant (yep, both of us), baby showers, Russian adoption/travel (yep, we both did that). We were able to commiserate about students as we eventually shared the same career of teaching. Now we share motherhood. We remarked how amazing it is that we met by chance yet our lives have shared so many unique similarities.

We don't get out without our kids much. It was fun to jibber-jabber and not have to guard our words. We finished dinner and were not ready to go home so we continued the evening at Starbucks and talked until they were closing up and kicked us out. As Tammy and I said our good-byes Tammy said that at our "next 20th" we'll have to have our kids drive us because we'll be so old.......thanks for *another* depressing thought, Tammy. But seriously, I am happy that we have seen each other though thick and thin (both figuratively and literally) and am looking forward to seeing the trouble we can get into over the next 20 years. And Tammy, if this schmaltzy post on my blog doesn't get you to comment, I don't know what will :-)