Paige

I'm sitting here thinking about my first cousin, Paige. She is my mom's sister's daughter. We are less than a year apart in age. We live three thousand miles apart geographically--always have. I grew up in California and Paige grew up in Virginia. But every summer as far back as I can remember and lasting through my high school years, my mom and her two sisters (and husbands and kids) would descend upon my grandparents' summer house in Beach Haven, New Jersey for two glorious weeks.

So for fourteen days, Paige and I got to spend pretty much every waking moment together. It was heavenly.

We would wake up to Jack's cream donuts and cantaloupe, head to the beach mid-morning, head back to the house when the noon whistle blew (seriously, there was a noon whistle that blew every.single.day. at precisely 12pm) and eat lunch in front of the TV, return to the beach for a few more hours during which time the ice-cream man would ring his bell at the top of the dunes and all of us kids would go scrambling for money to buy bomb pops and other assorted frozen treats, and then finally around four or five in the afternoon we would go back to the house to clean up for drinks on the front porch or, if it was not too muggy and the mosquitoes were at bay, up on the deck. My grandmother might make tiny little hot dog appetizers with ketchup/mustard dip, or maybe shrimp with cocktail sauce. When everyone was there at the same time we totaled fourteen--eight adults and six kids.

Paige and I shared a room. It was small, painted an odd shade of green, and had two beds and a dresser. And us. That was it. Every summer.

We were inseparable during those fourteen days. We even had matching clothes that our grandmother would buy for us every summer. We were referred to as "the twins". We loved it!

We didn't really see each other much outside of our summer vacations. We wrote letters. We occasionally would talk on the phone (not very often--this was back in the time when there was this thing called a "long distance rate", and California is a long distance from Virginia). Once Paige and her mom spent a week at Christmas with us. But really, our relationship grew pretty much out of those magical two weeks in the summer.

I vacationed with her one summer for a week in Maryland late in our high school years. I went to her family's house on St. Croix for a few weeks one summer and we traveled together for a month in Europe during our college years. We were each other's maid of honor at our weddings.

I was thinking about all of this today as Paige and I were exchanging long, detailed texts back and forth. We do that a lot. And not just texting. We write long, detailed emails. Very occasionally we will talk on the phone (she's not much of a phone fan). And we visit each other. Not a lot, and not enough, but we do squeeze in visits.

And I wondered, how did two kids who lived across a continent from one another end up in each other's weddings? How did we maintain, no not maintain how did we even establish, such a close friendship for dozens of years without cell phones and FaceTime?

I don't have an answer for that question. But somehow we did it. And we did it well, apparently, because I don't think there's anything we wouldn't tell one another. She's one of the first people I contact when something goes wrong and I need to commiserate. Also one of the first people I contact when things go well and I want to share.

Somehow, with three-thousand miles between us for 341 days of the year, we managed to make those fourteen days together add up to something priceless.

I'm thinking about all of this because 2017 has been a rough year for both of us. Neither of us would choose the path that got laid out in front of us. But there it was. And I can confidently say that Paige is one of the reasons I am still sane. This year was awful, but through it all she was right there by my side, both metaphorically and literally. She sent me texts of encouragement. She called--yes, she who detests the phone made an exception more than once to talk and more often than not to listen. She asked me questions that I know everyone else wanted to ask but they didn't know how. She flew across the country and the two of us went on a girl's beach weekend to help me give Dave a break for a few days (Dave made her swear up one side and down the other that she would take very good care of me and she more than accomplished that). She drove for hours to visit me after my surgery and kept telling me how amazing I was. I did not feel very amazing. I felt and looked the opposite of amazing. But she continued to insist that I was kicking some ass and at some point I started to believe her.

Maybe you read all of this and it doesn't seem that extraordinary to you. But if you knew Paige like I do, and you knew her story, her history, her life, you'd understand that she is Wonder Woman. She's a superhero in every sense of the word. The challenges that she has faced and overcome are book-worthy (in fact she's been writing a book for years now... it's gonna be good!). And in the midst of all that shit there she is supporting me.

I remember the toast I gave at her rehearsal dinner. It went something like this: Paige is one of those people who you know is there for you, no matter what. Sometimes she's walking in front of you to clear the path. Sometimes she's walking behind you to catch you if you fall. But mostly she's walking next to you, holding your hand, ready to celebrate your victories or wipe away your tears.

I have no explanation as to how we forged such an amazing bond with such limited time together. But I do know that as we get older it gets stronger. It is unbreakable.

I"m going to try to describe a visual representation of us. Picture two women standing, facing one another, about three feet apart. Now picture them leaning forward, without moving their feet, until their foreheads touch. So now they're supporting each other so neither one of them falls.

That's us. Depending on what's going on, one of us might be more upright and the other more bent, but we're still leaning on each other all the way.