Today’s is Holly’s birthday. (So you should probably go send her your fawning-est fan mail).

Last night at her birthday / going away dinner, she gave ME a gift. An impeccably cool, perfectly sentimental, one of a kind gift. Because that’s the sort of jerk she is.

Holly is packing up and shipping out of Minneapolis to accept the kind of dream job / adventure we would all bitterly envy her for if she didn’t fully, fully deserve it. She sends pictures of homes off the historic landmark registry and I try to convince her to turn this new life into a reality show. She demurs. But we would watch, right?
 
On the one hand, Holly moving means that we’ll no longer have a standing monthly date when I come back, which is obviously pretty sad since I’ll probably just sit outside her old apartment drinking champagne alone, on the street, and talking to myself. On the other hand, I can’t help but be 110 percent elated for her and proud of this ballsy move, which leaves no room to be sad for the rest of us.

She gave me this card and this pillow, which was sort of the perfect response to the tiny tiny unspoken sadness I have that I won’t see her great big grin on the regular anymore. After all the years and tangles and uncanny coincidences that brought us together, I’ve no doubt there is indeed a red string that has run through our lives and it was strong enough and long enough to spool out to LA and when she heads East, we’ll find slack in the line to cover that distance too.

Happy Birthday, my dear dear friend. Time with you is a relief and a refilling. Time away from you, watching you thrive, might be even sweeter.