Blessed

Allison Kraus played on the stereo and a cool breeze blew through the room.  I sank sleepily into the couch cushions and felt like my heart would burst with love for the girl in front of me. She rocked her nannyboy slowly back and forth until his 12-week-old body sank into sleep against her shoulder and I simultaneously dozed off on the couch.  I'm in Cambridge this weekend, visiting her, and oh, you guys, I don't know what I'd do without her.

Her name is Hallie.
She's my life twin.
I am so blessed that the universe tossed me a handout as great as her during this awful, crazy, time in my life.

Sometimes, you're lucky enough to find a friend who is exactly what you need and the two of you lock into each other's souls and worlds and lives irrevocably.  I was that lucky.  She gets me.  She's also like a better version of me: she's a nanny, she wants to be a midwife, she's obsessed with books, she's smart, she's an awesome photographer, and her blog is much more well-loved than mine. (Sigh). Um...I'm a nanny, I want to be a midwife, I want to be a photographer, and I wish my blog were more loved.  But it's all good.

Most of our time together we spend in stitches of laughter, quoting Ellen Degeneres and making inappropriate jokes about sheep.  Some of the time, she holds me while I cry.  We listen to music in the dark while we talk for hours until we drift off to sleep.  When I wake up in her yellow room with the fan blowing, I feel at peace.

I'm calling it now - someday, not long from now, we'll be working together as midwives, catching babies and having our own (I gotta find her a babydaddy) and raising them all in a giant joint-family commune that has a vegetable garden and too many animals and cloth diapers drying on the clothesline outside.

Sometimes, the universe deals out a lot of shit.  And sometimes, it sends out blessings so big and so unreal that they take your breath away if you let them.  She's one of those, and I thank my lucky stars every day for her.  Because now that I've found her, I'm not ever letting go.