The End of An Era

Tonight marks the end of an era. Tonight, one of my best friends is leaving LA for good.

I have been friends with Anna for almost ten years. We met in college. We were roommates senior year. After graduation, she and her fiancee Erez moved to Los Angeles so she could attend grad school at USC. Since 2007, she's been by my side as we navigated this new path as grownups, right alongside each other.

When Greene Bean moved here in 2008, our little twosome became a party of three, and oh did we have fun! And in 2010, after months of whispering to GB every time Anna refused even a sip of alcohol, we were the among the first to know that our very first friend from college was going to be a mom :)

"Everyone is jealous of us!" we told each other happily all through the pregnancy. But I don't think either of us were prepared for the love that we felt the day Eytan was born. I certainly wasn't! After waiting hours in the hospital while Anna was in labor, when I held that baby for the first time, the fifth or sixth person to ever lay eyes on him, I burst into tears and cried hysterically. My best friend was a mom!

And over the past year, watching that baby grow up - I can't even begin to put it into words. He started out as a tiny little nugget - and has now grown into the most adorable, hilarious, walking and talking little man. I adore every bit of him. The thought of not getting to see him every day is killing me.

Because now it's over. Anna and Erez and Eytan are moving to Memphis tonight. From now on, I won't be able to stop by their house, even just for a minute, to hug and kiss them and squeeze that baby. I won't be seeing my friend at any more community events and get to sit next to her and whisper gossip while we're pretending to be professional. I won't get to call them and convince them to come meet me for lunch with just a few minutes notice.

Weddings, graduation parties, baby showers, birthdays, holidays - we've celebrated them all together. We've flown across the country to meet our friends for girls weekends. We've spent mornings at the farmers market, afternoons at the movies, evenings at dinner. We've eaten takeout on each others' couches, gone to Dodger games, ran our errands at Target and Costco together. We have taken turns puking in the bathroom after a particularly rough New Years Eve and then recovered in time to head out for brunch. We have laughed and cried and emailed and texted and talked for hours. We are more than friends. We are family.

I told Anna last week that when we both first moved back to LA after graduation, life was completely different. I had no job, no apartment, no boyfriend, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Bush was in the White House. I had a flip phone, for gods sake!

It truly is the end of an era. But I guess this is what it means to be a grownup - to be able to say "see you later," not goodbye, and mean it. Because I know Anna will be my friend forever - no matter where we live. We will still laugh and chat and email and call each other all the time, and we will still see each other as often as we can.

But I am still going to miss her so much.