Wonderfully Weird

About two weeks ago, I stood with my best friend Zac on a rooftop bar in Santa Fe and waited for Tiffany to arrive with the purse (I hate carrying purses and almost always cram my stuff into hers). When she arrived, along with Zac's girlfriend Kate and Tiffany's sister Melody, I fished my license out and showed it to the bartender who wouldn't serve me my water until I'd shown I was of age.

"Isn't it weird we're adults now?" Zac said.

I peered at him in the bright light of the setting sun. Took in the scruff on his face, the man-ness of him.

"Yes, it is weird," I said.

Tiffany, Kate and Melody laughed at us, but I knew what he meant. Zac and I met when we were four and our moms worked together at a child abuse prevention center in Jackson, Mississippi. Our moms--and a third mom whose daughter Rebecca was born when we were six--became best friends and Zac and I did too. We used to fish for stuffed animals off the top bunk of his bed and speak in pretend foreign languages. Our families only lived in the same state for three years, but the friendship survived the crossing of state lines and even international borders. When Zac and his parents moved to Istanbul for a few years when he was nine, we recorded messages to each other on cassette tapes and mailed them back and forth.

I wanted Zac all to myself, but of course I had to share him with my brother Brandon, who is four years older than us. Thankfully, as we grew up, I got less and less jealous and the age difference between Brandon and us and Rebecca grew less and less important.

For most of our friendship, our parents planned our visits. They controlled the money and navigated their work schedules and our school schedules and our sports commitments and Zac's trips back and forth to Turkey. Since the day we met, our families have spent Thanksgiving together and have a couple of other planned trips a year as well.

Last year, we kids decided to branch out and start a trip for just us, whoever can make it: Brandon, Zac, Rebecca and I, significant others, siblings.

We plan all the travel details and the meals and the accommodations, and we do it all without our parents, which, as Zac pointed out in Santa Fe, makes us adults (even if I still get carded every time I go into a bar).

Of course, lots of other things make us adults too. Like the fact that we're, in order of age, 33, 29, 28 and 22 years old. Or the fact that we live on our own and work real jobs and pay rent.

But we knew each other before adulthood was even something to consider--when we were little-bitty-skinny-legged-kids and bald-headed babies. And that is rich, thank-my-stars-lucky and weird. Wonderfully weird.