Lack of Pictures: Abundance of Love.

Fairytale playground in Ballston Spa, NY

Kathleen was my roommate in college.

I had other roommates.

In fact, there was a time when I lived with four other girls (all of whom are wonderful people, but I don't recommend ever living with four other girls - especially if there is only one bathroom and two small bedrooms), but Kathleen's is the name I bring up when someone asks me who my college roommate was.

Things always just sort of ... clicked with us.

She got me and I think I mostly intrigued her and somehow we always just got along.

She has lived hours away for years now.

But she is still one of the few people on my list.  You know the one.  The list of people you'd call if something really bad happened... or really good.  Not just the mundane things... but the big  things.  The big life things.

She's a person who I know would watch my kids in a pinch and I've been the person who took the pie out of the oven for her when she just couldn't be there at the end of the cook cycle.  We've seen each other through pregnancies and births and break-ups and depressions and September 11th and marriage and everything that goes along with all of it.

So when I found out she was having major surgery and might need some help, I said I would come.  That we would come.

She was happy to have someone for whom she didn't have to clean the house.  And she's right.  She doesn't have to clean it.

And I didn't snap a bunch of pictures of our families and kids together.  I didn't honestly really think about it.  We were busy just being together.  Talking about stuff and remembering things and raising our kids and making lunches and driving and going to playgrounds and doing life it would have been a little wrong to go about posing people and snapping pictures.

Maybe next time we'll get a good one of all of us together.

But for now, it was nice to have the opportunity to just be.  To be with a comfortable, forever friend.  A family who is more like family than just friends.  To have pizza at one of their favorite joints and to chill on the couch and to scrub kitchen counters and reach the high places and for Michael to go and play indoor soccer with a friend and for the kids to romp and play with their friends and to have several nights of sleepovers and glow in the dark stars on the ceilings and to drink all of that in.

The picture above is the playground to which I took Jonah and Maeryn while Kat had her Littles at swimming lessons.  Funny - there just didn't seem to be time for pictures when we were together.