Middle School Friendships & a Parkway Session

The twins are going to be joining me at the middle school this year (can you believe they are officially middle school students in a month? Some of you haven't met them so - sure, super believable. Some of you remember when they were born three months early at 1.6 and 2.4lbs... and it's wild to see them almost as tall as me and wildly independent in so many ways.

The thing that I keep thinking about is how over the next few years they are likely to make a few friends who will be their friends for the rest of their lives. Friends, who, will marry people who will also become their lifelong friends. I'm sitting here today planning out the month of July and I have plans to meet with three of my elementary/middle school friends. One with Jessi (a middle school bestie) & Brandon, one with Danielle (who I've been friends with since elementary school) and her girls, and one with The Esbrandt Family (pictured here a couple of years ago on the parkway in Asheville).

Cody was a good friend of one of my best friends in middle school. Because she and I were attached at the hip, he and I became friends as well. While we largely lost touch in High School (because I moved to North Carolina and social media wasn't a thing yet) we eventually reconnected online. He encouraged his lovely wife to trust a friend he made in middle school to take their wedding photos (my first beach wedding) and we've cheered each other on since then. They bring their sweet kids (starting with one, then two, and then three) up this way for vacation and I'm always down to drive to them if they are near-ish (what's one state over?). So far, we've taken photos together in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

If the twins and I are in crisis (like this winter during the brain surgery fiasco) Cody & Chelsea are almost always the first to reach out and send whatever help they can. My back to school shopping list my first year teaching Cody sent things from and told me his mom would have wanted him to (she was a teacher, and at the time so was Chelsea). Chelsea is one of the easiest people in the world to be happy around, and I am forever thankful they found each other. She is one of the only people I've eaten yellow queso for because she sweetly ordered it for me the day we met. But mostly, I'm thankful he and I became friends because they make the cutest babies for me to snuggle (who even when they don't love strangers, have so far had a pretty good run of being okay snuggling me, one of my greatest life accomplishments).

My life is better because of them. Hard times are less hard because of them. Trips to the coast feel more like home because of them. All because sometime in middle school I made a friend. I know every friend the twins introduce me to this coming school year I will wonder if this is the life-long friend. If this is the impact-their-lives-positively-for-the-next-few-decades friend. You know we are GOOD friends because I can't find a single photo of us together. Even from middle school. I'll be sure to continue taking lots of photos of the twins and their friends, even though they roll their eyes a little. You just really don't know who you'll wish you had childhood photos of. If someone reading this has one with Cody & I from Madison Middle - 100% send that my way.

I consider myself pretty lucky to have somehow, across state lines and decades, maintained friendships with people I met in elementary and middle school back in Florida. People like these sweet souls. Jessi & Brandon. Mikki. Chelsea & Sarah. Danielle. Mikki. Jasmine. Traci. So many people that I can't list them all here.

It's a reminder for me, especially this summer, that decisions are being made by the twins, now, that will shape who they become and who their village will be made up of. I wish I could go back in time and sit in class next to middle school Vicki being teased relentlessly by middle school Cody about whether she did or did not have a crush on someone in our class to the point of having me almost in tears and tell her that one day - believe it or not - Cody and his future wife (who neither of them would have believed would be as pretty, smart, or kind as she is) will be two of her most favorite people in the world even as a grown up. & he'll barely ever be mean to her as grownups and will rarely give her a hard time.

Barely ever. Ha.

Chelsea & Cody - I cannot wait to see you and your little family this month.

Thank you for being part of the reason I can be excited for the twins being big enough to start middle school. I hope they meet people like you out of the gate - and here's to hoping they never have as many states between them as we all do.

Here's a throwback for you - the you who is reading this - to their wedding. Fun fact... their wedding followed a pretty destructive hurricane in the area and we weren't even sure the venue could host a wedding. One of mine and Chelsea's first real conversations was me assuring her I would be there - even if there wasn't power in town. Then, the three of us almost all drowned during a storm surge while taking their photos and had to literally RUN up a tall flight of stairs to get away from FEET of water coming for us (how nobody had a video of this is beyond me - I would pay to watch us scramble and then burst into laughter). Lots of debris had to be erased from their photos. 10/10 would do it again, though.