In what I hope will become a tradition here at Ampersand, I’d like to write another Friend’s Birthday Journal Entry. Quick, whose birthday is it today? Who’s turning 27? That’s right, it’s Marah! Happy birthday Marah!
Okay, remember when I wrote an entry about Amy I said that there was a group of girls with whom I grew up that called and still called themselves (or, you know, ourselves since I’m one too) the Key Girls? Well, Marah is very solidly a Key Girl. She was a huge fixture in my Little Baby Chiara days and remains one in my Slightly Less Of A Baby Chiara Days. It’s hard to describe this kind of friendship. Do you talk about all the stuff you’ve done together? I could write a journal in its entirety about the various things I’ve done with this woman. Do you talk about how much you love and admire and occasionally envy and enjoy and have the best time with this person? Do you try to think about all the times this person was in the frame of the various photographs of your life, or on the other end of the phone, or supporting your desperately weeping face with her shoulder? I don’t know, so I am just going to tell you a couple of stories about Marah and let you try to figure out yourself.
We were in Brownies together Her dad and my mom were chaperones on a trip to Disneyworld once…if you grow up in Florida you are required by law to go to Orlando at least once a year with school or with your family or something. Being law-abiding Brownies, we were there, and there’s this whole big story about being at dinner and her dad wouldn’t let her have a soda, and she dropped her rainbow sherbet on the floor, and for some reason I had a soda, and I was never allowed to have soda, and we ended up skipping around the hotel and pretending to be Dorothy and the lion and the tinman and the scarecrow all at once. You have to understand that at this point in her career Marah had the kind of hair every single little girl dreams of. I don’t care if you were a tomboy, if you were a riot grrl at age eight, if you never had any body issues at all. I’m talking about blond, straight, and to her butt. Princess hair. That’s all I’m going to say. She could really work a Brownie beanie, too.
We had a secret club One of the other Key Girls (hi Ash!) was in this too, as well as another girl who we all kind of lost track of after the schism of seventh grade and the other three of us went off to Snooty Prep School. Anyway, our clubhouse was in this beautiful grapetree on her grandmother’s property. This was possibly the coolest house in the world, and Marah’s grandmother was possibly the best in the entire world. Our treehouse was green outside, and we painted bright lipstick pink on the inside. So awesome. We were going through a pretty heavy Sweet Valley High phase at the time (Marah was Elizabeth, Ashley was Jessica, and I was always Enid. Man! Stupid Enid.) and also, apparently, going through a pretty heavy altruism phase, too, because would you believe what we did with our club dues, which in my case were carefully harvested from my mom’s spare change? Gifts for the cafeteria ladies. I’m sorry, what was that? You thought you were a good person? No. Nothing beats giving presents to the cafeteria ladies, and having them call you up there during lunch, and thank you sobbingly. Our Nobel Peace prizes were stuck up on our bedroom walls next to our science awards and Pierrot dolls. Oh, also during this time Marah and I were in Peter And the Wolf, the ballet, and she was the bird and I was the cat, and we rocked.
We did a ton of stuff in high school Like, let’s see: we were in theater together, we did the Ren Faire together, we went on mission trips together, we went to Sir Pizza together, we went to camp together (okay, technically that was in fourth grade), we carpooled together, we had a weird job together that involved driving to various ghettoes in Miami and giving three year olds language tests. I think one of the best things we did together was spend a summer on Key Biscayne without a lot to do except hang out at her house every day and read books. We wouldn’t talk much, just read books and sat on her bed and made grilled cheese sandwiches. Pure bliss.
We went to Italy together This, also, is a subject that deserves its own entry at least. 23 years old, two girls in Italy for two weeks. I think I see the opening shot of the movie now. I think the five days we spent in Florence were five of the greatest I ever had, even including walking around in the rain looking for a hotel because my Italian wasn’t good enough to understand that the signora wasn’t telling me she had rooms, but that she didn’t have rooms. Possibly one of the best things we did was sit on the rooftop cafe at the Uffizi and drink very expensive water “with gas” and look at the red roofs and the rest of the city. One time we ended up at a very fancy restaurant in Bologna, which we really could not afford, and ordering, in desperation, a salad to share. The waiter announced, in a very pointed manner: “ONE! salad.” The other good thing we did in Italy was eat gelato at least twice a day.
There’s more, of course: being in weddings together; my coming to visit her at college one year and meeting her now-husband and then-boyfriend, and essentially grilling him to see if he was good enough to date her (he was); playing lots of pool games in lots of different pools; sleeping over at her house thousands and thousands of times and singing her a little song as we fell asleep; telling everyone in second grade she was a princess (see princess hair, above); watching Pretty In Pink over and over and sighing over Duckie; crying on the phone about boys…everything that everyone does with their friends. You should also know that Marah is very smart and beautiful and has a gorgeous singing voice. She is the fourth grade teacher everyone wishes they had. Her wedding in July was super fun.
A couple of months ago when I got back from Christmas vacation, Marah sent me an email saying it felt really weird not to see me, after only a couple of days spent seeing each other every day…that great feeling when you wake up and don’t have anything in particular to do and your best friend calls you and says “What do you want to do today?” That’s something I miss the most about being in high school or home from college, just the time to hang out and do nothing with your best friends. I don’t do that in the same way anymore, not the least because the Key Girls live so far away. I miss them (hi Ashley and Manya!). I especially miss Marah today because it’s her birthday, and because the other day she sent me an email saying that I only ever mention my mom and Carl and readers, yet she also reads all my entries. Isn’t that so great? So here is your very own shout-out, M. I love you!