a weekend that brings my college years back to me. they often hover close to the surface and the memories of places and people and carefree laughter have been rolling out of us since thursday night when lisa and mike and their beautiful almost grown boys arrived from michigan. our friendship always seemed a little unreal. our bond a little undefined. it just is. we met in art history class, lisa's first class her first day of university, i think. it was my second year and i had fallen into art the year before. we sat close enough for me to make comments to her that first day. and then walked out together. and have never been without each other since.
lisa married mike when we were still young and breath less. in many ways he is the male version of me. and 11 years later, when i married tom, it was clear that in just as many ways, he was the male version of lisa. so when we are able to be together, the energy sizzles and is at once, wonderfully crazy and beautifully still. her boys are curious and artistic. they love music and photography. they sit around listening to our crazy reminiscences without being too embarrassed or too bored.
and we wander around the studio, lisa and i. we talk and i sew, our lives finally blending despite the 500 miles that seperates us. it's been 8 years since we were together. time sifts past. but here we are, a long weekend in september filling our hearts and souls until the next time.

mountains of spirea, spilling into the yard. the tiny white confetti petals that have haunted me my entire adult life. the first house i lived in away from my parents. not a dorm room or an apartment. but a house. a beautiful 1920s wood frame house in michigan. we called it the 'white house'. i lived on the main floor and lisa lived upstairs with the sloped ceilings. with our dogs and the boys we loved. the house had a rotting front porch that tilted forward, and sheltering it from the road were huge spirea bushes. in june when they flowered it was like the house was floating on a cloud of white flowers. the white flowers and the sickly sweet scent became my early summer drug. i lived there almost 4 years. when i moved back to canada, i planted a bush at my parents. but before that plant would grow into a bush, i'd moved on again. and then 12 years ago, we moved into our little house by the lake, and as it should be, we have a yard full of spirea.