Kayaks, the River, and my Best Friend

To those of you who don’t know this beautiful woman, this is Paige. My best friend. It all started when we went to Syracuse back in 2002 to play Women’s Lacrosse. She played attack, me goalkeep. We were always known as quite a pair while at Syracuse… During training in Syracuse I was the slowest and somehow Paige who was a fast girl was always somewhere in the middle to the back getting reemed by Coach Miller or Trainer Kenya. I would try hard where as Paige would have this look of indifference.

After I left Syracuse, we kept in close touch. By phone, webcam, email. You name it we did it. We both lived in MD/Va area so during our college summers we would spend most of our time with each other. When it came time to grow up and get a job…Paige went to DC and did the Mr. Smith goes to Washington successful career path.. While I bounced from North Carolina to Southern Maryland with jobs with not too much success. Then we met our current men in our lives…and life changed…we both had something to complain to the other about. For the last couple years we still have done mostly long distance since it has mostly never worked out that we have been in the same place for very long.

One thing is for sure that I know about Paige. She has always been a strong supportive force in my life. She tells it like it is. She doesn’t tolerate my bullshit. There are times when we rub each other the wrong way…There are times when the words we say hurt. And there are times that we try to do the best we can just to be there. She did that for me this past weekend. We needed to see each other. It had been way too long since our last visit when she was in CALI for a business trip last spring.

She brought her kayaks down and we went to go play in the river:

This is my favorite picture perhaps ever of the two of us. I couldn’t tell it we were posing for the camera with are arms behind each other or if we were self consciously thinking it would be fun to knock the other over right now:

After chatting and drifting too far away from shore heavy into conversation we paddled back to the house and watched the sunset over the water. I miss those beautiful sunsets. We loaded up the kayaks and I watched as Paige drove away. I was not sad. I was happy. I was happy for her, happy because it wasn’t goodbye…it never is…it is see you later mofo.