when you are the bad friend

On July 31st I went into the gift shop at work and picked up an overpriced birthday card, it was made by letterpress here in Portland and while it was super cute it was still a lot more than a greeting card should be. But I was compensating for the fact that I was collecting birthday gifts from the gift shop on campus.

Next I found an extremely large Chocolonely chocolate bar and a few other small but cute snacks. I was extremely proud of myself for taking the time days before my best friends birthday and just 24 hours before a flight to Toronto to organize a care package for her birthday.

I began writing her card during a quiet moment at work and intended to walk over to the post office on campus to get this little collection of items routed to NYC ASAP. My agenda got the best of me and before I knew it, I was in the car park headed home with her goodies strewn about in my bag. In this moment I was proud that I had even remembered to stash them in my bag versus have them sit at my desk for the couple weeks that I was traveling for work.

Fast forward to mid August and I am now 10 days past her birthday. I have just returned home from a week in LA and Mike greets me at the airport with a cute story about Momo. Something along the lines that Mike was upstairs getting dressed and had left Mario downstairs for just a second and next thing he knows Mario is marching upstairs with a prideful grin that can only be attributed to the very large chocolate bar he had in his hand with messy gnaw marks from his toddler teeth and chocolate painted face. Mike tells me this as a cute little ‘boys gone wild’ story from their week at home without me. Immediately I feel regret and guilt. I flashback to the day that I bought those goodies for Emi’s birthday and the dumb idea I had that if I brought it home I would surely find time before my flight to drop it at the post office and it would make its way to her. Now nearly a month past her birthday all she received from me was a text message on her birthday.

On my birthday she sent me a thoughtful assortment of gifts reflecting her and my life in the past few months. And it brought a tear to my eye.

So tonight, after a long but lovely day of parenting, I reached into the fridge to poor myself a glass of rose and saw the half eaten chocolate bar and decided to go for it. I took a chunk of the chocolate almond bar and was reminded of my failure in this relationship. My failure to adequately honor and celebrate my friend of 33 years. Emi, I know you are reading so comment below with how you want me to make up for this. xx Ly