Someone get me a cocoa-baba

I sat on the couch this morning while I brushed my teeth and looked out the window for the gold Honda Pilot to drive up our street one last time. Eric was taking our dear friends Paul and Megan to the airport for their 12:00 flight to California. Tears were running down my face as I tried to picture life in North Carolina without them. Without Harry coming over to play with the boys while Eric and Paul go running; without dinners at their house that felt so comfortable and warm and sometimes more like home than our own house; without our frequent trips to the beach with Megan always finding the biggest and most beautiful beach house for a steal (or a "still", as she would say), without Harry's ubiquitous cocoa-babas and Eli's little dimples; without my partner in lateness. For three years, we have built the foundations for our families side by side- buying houses and having babies and going to school.

The boys looked at me uncomfortably and Marley squirmed in my arms as I stood in the driveway crying and waving after them. I hate to say goodbye to people I love, though I guess I'm not alone in that. I know that life will be good to them in California. I'll picture them in an exact replica of their North Carolina house, except with a red-tile roof and a palm tree in the yard. Meg, I wanted to print this poem and give it to you before you left, but I never had time, so I'll post it here for you:

On Friendship
Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.


When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.


And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.