Good-bye...For Now

After all the friends who've left D.C. in the past two years, you'd think I'd be immune to the gloominess of having to say good-bye. I'm not.


In fact, when I picked up this cake last week....

 for this party....

in honor of these friends, Aaron + Becky...

I burst into tears.


Odd, because cake {especially icing} usually makes me SO happy!

Aaron and I go way back. Like, first big job out of college back. We met as two naive twenty-somethings in way over our heads producing newscasts in a mid-size TV market. When we botched that up, we became two twenty-somethings roaming the halls of Congress. Life, for a while, was one perptual episode of The West Wing and wide-eyed, we took it all in together.

It's not that I miss the many friends (that means you, Virginia!) who have already moved any less than I already miss Becky + Aaron.  I think my looming sadness about their departure has everything to do with how far from D.C. they are moving - to Phoenix! You don't need me or Rand McNally to tell you that Phoenix isn't AT ALL near Washington, but for dramatic effect, let me get specific: it's 2,302 miles.

Aaron + Becky's move to the desert had me feeling a little, well, deserted, 'til I stopped for a minute to realize that ALOT of my closest friends live the far away  - and yet, when we get together, even if it is just once or twice a year, it feels like time never passed! So, piggy-backing on yesterday's post, if I could add a third thought on friendship, it'd be in our world of gchat and email and expedia.com that distance doesn't matter. That is what I'm telling myself, for now, as I nurse the good-bye hangover of seeing yet another set of friends leave town.