it was a starry night

 

i saw her for the first time when i was seven years old. it was my first week at school, we were having a recess at the school field. we talked abit, not that i can remember what it is about right now. that same day was also my first day going home on the school bus. i remembered, it was a huge yellow school bus, just like how a little girl will imagine it to be. when i got on the bus, she was there too. we looked at each other with wide eyes, not too sure if we should sit together, would she reject me? then, she asked me, would you like to be my best friend?


from that day on, we were inseparable. we sat together in class, we sat together in the school bus, when we were dropped off at our own homes, it was painful, then we called each other on the telephone and spoke for hours about nothing. sometimes, we'd just hold the receiver, saying nothing while watching tv together, in our own homes! that was the sweetest times of friendship, nothing like the simplicity of a child's mind. 


as years went by, we had many moments of stargazing together, we called it so, because those were moments of stepping out of our level of maturity, of an achievement, of a celebration. from barbie dolls, to boy bands, to simple make up and then some more real life boy chasing or being chased, to cold wars where we don't speak about things in our hearts because we are turning into women who had so much identity issues inside. then we begin to have other best friends and then....we just lost touch. 


weeks turn into months, turning into years. we have no idea what is going on in each other's life although we still see each other occasionally in church, in some mutual friend's wedding or birthday parties. it's not accidental when people come together, in this case, people coming back together because the absent year in our friendship did not harm the core of our love for each other. we were more than best friends, we are sisters joined by the same faith, that goes deeper than any blood ties. 


we began rebuilding our ship that washed ashore on dry land. pouring water daily to make it afloat, mending the rotting wood that threatens time and again to sink the ship, taking turn being captain and helper when one becomes strong and the other weak. we know there will be storms, there will be pirates on this rich ocean we are sailing in together, yet nothing will make us abandon ship. she is God's love materializing in physical form.  


then, one day, we sat atop her roof, in the still quietness of the night, wind breezing through our hair and looked up, it was a starry night.