Years

Today is my best friend’s birthday.
Birthdays are very important things to me. They rank as my favorite holiday(s), being that there’s a lot less stress and a lot more individual attention. My own birthday comes after the birthdays of all my closest friends, and I do try to make those days as unique and memorable as I can. There have been some pretty epic failures, like when I had Auli drive two hours on the day we had designated to celebrate her birthday to actually help me move into a new apartment. Rara’s birthday last year was pretty fail-ful, as I made her drive us forty minutes to see a movie that was amazing in its original language but horribly dubbed, and I got her to buy me coffee and had her pick me up AND take me home.
On the reverse side of this, there have been some celebrations that I continue to be particularly proud of; I built Becktsar a barn; Mattpi got a personalized treasure hunt; Kathurn was supposed to get a strip dancer but that fell through. Mama got her own personal penguin; Kristi got a movie themed party with a true poster-size imitation of several of her friends imitating the poster for Empire Records.
Today was calm, but in its own way extremely awesome and I’m pretty sure Rara was quite satisfied with it. Lunch, shopping, bowling, television, and cake. There must always be a cake. Even on Auli’s super!fail there was cake. These are the important things.
Rara is… a very important person to me. She is unique, she is clever. She is me in a different body. We somehow grew up in completely different circumstances but emerging with the same viewpoints – even though the reasoning is usually COMPLETELY different. We understand each other in a way nobody else could, I think, and our friendship is probably one of the most important relationships I’ve ever cultivated in my life. She is my soul twin, oftentimes my example, she sings a song that only the two of us know.
I am not sure where I gained my understanding of friendship. My parents do not have friends, nor do my siblings. Celebrating the birthday of someone who was not a family member was pretty foreign in my house, and I do not imagine my parents even remember the birthdays of their old friends. I still remember the birthday of the boy who lived next door to me between the ages of five and seven. I send birthday greetings and virtual gifts to friends literally on the other side of the world. Even if I have not talked to a friend in years, I will mentally reflect upon them in my memory on the day of their birth, appreciating the fact that I was ever their friend, and partaking of some small minuscule activity that reaffirms their importance in my life, even if it’s so simple as thinking of them as I plan my dinner and perhaps changing the meal to reflect them in some way known to no one but me.
Birthdays are sacred.
So happy birthday Raranekochan, my heart-screw-holder and soul!twin. <3. I hope it was great, even if it wasn't as epic as a penguin or a barn.

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