Pumpkin with pumpkins

We took a day this weekend and drove to Wisconsin to see some dear friends who we haven't seen in far too long -- since the day after our family changed forever, to be precise. We pulled in to their driveway as very different people and still, once we exchanged hellos and hugs and reintroduced the kids, it was really very much the same as it always was.

Lil E got to geek out on Star Wars with the boys, playing, dueling light sabers, and watching "Return of the Jedi" on a projection screen. I got to spend a long time catching up with one of my favorite friends, Katie, about little details and major life transitions.

As we talked, I kept having flashes of all the moments Katie and I had, beginning as coworkers and quickly becoming friends. There were many escapes from our offices to eat chicken dumpling soup and whisper about the conservative old men we worked with. There were Halloween parties with cauldrons of sangria and crazy suburban scrapbooking get-togethers and secret meet-ups to edit resumes. There was the moment that I believe defined our friendship, when Katie called during my first attempt at letting Lil E cry it out during nap time. I picked up the phone sobbing almost as much as my baby was in the other room.

"Jessica, listen to me carefully," she said. "Go in to your bedroom, close the door, and talk to me. Trust me. He will be OK."

Every ten minutes or so, she would pause our conversation and ask if I could still hear cries. Finally, 47 minutes in, he'd stopped.

"You did it," she said calmly, sweetly. "You survived. I'm proud of you. Now call me at nap time tomorrow and we will do it again. And again and again until he goes down without crying."

I will never forget the care and the guidance she gave me that day, how she helped me carry out the choice I'd made and how concerned she was that I was as safe, sound, and OK as my boy.

Today, Katie and her husband and boys took Lil E and me to a pumpkin farm, where the kids climbed bails of hay, did somersaults in the bouncy house, squeamishly fed llamas and goats from their own wiggly hands, and picked out pumpkins to take home. As we tromped through a corn maze with our silly, leggy, talkative boys, I asked Katie if we would have ever believed the scene if we'd been shown it on fast forward ten years ago when we met.

"Oh no!", she laughed, and I tried to imagine what we looked back then in our suits and with our Franklin Covey day planners, what was important to us, what we dreamed lay ahead of us.

It wasn't this. But this...this is so much better.

The only change I'd make is seeing Katie and her family more often.  But even if it is another two years before we meet in person again -- and I am going to do my best to make sure it isn't -- I know we will be back up in Wisconsin, picking out pumpkins and picking up right where we left off with each other, no matter how much our lives may changed.