One October Sunday

Nine years ago this week, I met someone who radically altered the course of my life.

I was living in the Washington, DC, area and nearing the end of what was supposed to be a short-term internship. I met Shaliece on a Sunday. The Friday before, I had been offered a promotion and an extension - as the Resident Advisor and Lead Intern Coordinator. I loved DC, but wasn't sure I wanted to venture that far out of my comfort zone - staying for a year.

Shaliece and I attended the same church congregation for young adults. We met at an after-church potluck social that had some ridiculously comedic name. It was her first Sunday. I knew very few people, as I primarily let my Pilot-personality roommate (see here for more about the Pilot/Wingman personality theory) do the socializing for me. It so happened we were the only two people who didn't know anyone else (my roommate, for some reason, wasn't there), so we naturally gravitated to one another.

I went home that night and realized that I really wanted to stay, because I now had a friend that hadn't come courtesy of my roommate. That, combined with my lifelong fascination with all things DC, resulted in me accpeting the position and staying.

Every single thing that has happened in my life since the fall of 1998 resulted from that decision, made primarily because I found a friend in Shaliece and somehow knew the two of us would become inseparable.

Shaliece and I have gone through a lot together. Looking for, finding and losing love, divorce, betrayal, heartache, dark lonely days and days filled with sunshine and laughter. Wild adventures and middle-of-the-night talks. Job issues, moves, boyfriends, fiances, husbands, children. We adventured all over DC, went on road trips and became the laughing stock of the church volleyball team because we cared more about talking than playing. It seemed everything could be endured if the two of us tackled it together. Nothing seemed too outlandish. One particularly memorable trip found us in rurual western Virginia staying in the dorm room of two girls we'd never met. A trip to NYC landed us in a hotel I refused to describe to my parents until years later. She convinced me to buy a real wedding dress, dragging me to bridal stores galore while I was on a business trip to Maryland. She took our engagement photos. I flew to South Carolina for her baby shower - representing all the out-of-town friends who weren't able to make it. We window-shopped for antiques in Savannah, celebrated my birthday in Baltimore with s'mores and a sleepover the weekend before 9/11 and played an elaborate game of pretend in Manhattan. I have boxes of photos of one of our adventures or another.

She is one of the reasons Himself and I ended up together - and was half of the couple with whom we double dated the first six weeks Himself and I started hanging out. We never lived in the same place again after I left to return to school the following summer, but we continued to be close friends - stopping in whenever one of us would be in close proximity to the other.

We both know some of each other's darkest secrets - things not revealed to almost anyone else. We both knew each other at the most difficult points of our lives - and somehow managed to escape them to celebrate the happiest days of our lives that were waiting around the next bend.

Today I drove up the canyon to one of the ski resorts to visit Shaliece. She has been in town visiting relatives, and it presented the perfect opportunity for Baby G and I to adventure up to visit them. She oohed and awed over Baby G, while I marveled at her 6-month-old little boy and commented on how much her almost-3-year-old has grown up since I saw her last summer.

The hours slipped by until it was time for me to head for home. We talked children and life and pondered on how astounding it was that we'd known each other for nine years. I thought about it a lot on the drive home. I thought about how much our lives have changed from that weekend nine years ago when we met. Neither of us, at that point, could have possibily predicted where we would end up nearly a decade later - she the wife of a Naval officer and mother of two in the Pacific Northwest, me married to Himself and the new mother of an infant living in The Frontier.

It was a beautiful afternoon to spend with an old friend - very much like the crisp fall afternoon on which we met, neither of us knowing how completely our life course was about to be altered.

It was a happy moment to introduce Baby G to one of my dearest friends. I hope one day she is just as lucky.