March 11-- Melinda

I am excited that today is the birthday of one of my very best friends and I get to write about her!   What a privilege.  And what a challenge!  She has been a part of my life for almost two decades and how to sift through all those shared memories for the very best?  Really, any memory will do because they're all the best.  Just having her as a part of my life for all these years-- I am the luckiest.

So, Melinda.  We met freshman year at Hiram, but not right away.  I can't remember the first time I talked with her but I think she was there that night we played sardines in Colton, and then after that, well, we were just all together.  She moved in with Jen and Leigh and that was it.  We were the group. We dressed up to go dancing, we helped Jen cook feasts in the kitchenette, we stayed up too late taking  My favorite memories?  Cooking spaghetti in the summer dorm.  Hoping the Dodge Colt would make it up the hill on 700 so we could get to work.  The music festival.  That one night we planned out, in great detail, just how we would all move to Portugal and live a life of communal perfection. There is hardly a memory of my time at college that doesn't have her in it.  But the really great thing about my friendship with Melinda is that the memories go on after college too.  The Shaker house and dinner parties in Bedford, moving away and then coming back home-- with my dear friend to welcome me.  We've moved in tandem into this next phase of our lives-- husbands, houses, dogs, kids--and I can't imagine it any other way.  Watching our children play together every Friday night, I am immeasurably grateful for a friendship that has grown and changed and endured all this time.

When you meet Melinda today, what you'll notice about her right away is that she is kind, and so utterly giving of herself that she doesn't even notice it.  You'll also know that she is a great cook, even if she never writes down the recipes, and she's a brilliant writer, and she's got great taste in jewelry and in art.  When she is all in her teacher-and-mom persona, she will impress you plenty.  Because she is so put-together and so calm, so confident with that tiny little lift to her chin, so at ease with herself.  She has this wonderful wry smile and this incredible talent for knowing the right words to say, almost all the time.  She is honest and real and approachable and she makes you want to stay a little longer to just enjoy her presence.

And if you do stay longer, and you get to know her a little more?  Then you'll see what I really love about her, because she'll start to let her guard down a little and underneath, she is passionate and irreverent and delightfully funny, a dreamer of dreams like no one you've met.  I love to hear her talk about books, her deep knowledge and intelligence and insight coming out in every gesture.  I love to get her laughing at some silly double entendre, because she will laugh so hard she cries and everyone in the tri-state area will have no choice but to laugh along with her.  She has a joy that is contagious.

When we met, all of us friends back at Hiram, we all fell in love with Melinda because of that joy, the way she attacked life so fearlessly and beautifully, sweeping us along with her.  It didn't matter if we were heading off to go camping, driving to work, or sitting drinking wine in a dorm room--everything was more fun when she was around. Nineteen years later I still love that about her, even though we have all settled into our adult lives and nothing is quite so sweeping any more.  But what I find myself noticing the most now, is how true she is.  How she will do anything for her friends,  how she perseveres, how she devotes herself to causes and to people, how she channels her passion to make change in the world.  I love to watch her as a mother, to know her as a teacher, to see her as a wife and a daughter and a friend-- because everything my beautiful friend does, she does so very very well.

I hope she knows that she's always been an inspiration to me, and that every day I know I am so very lucky to have her as my friend.