to love at all is to be vulnerable

my dad says pretty often that he can't believe how fast time flies. he says it with the same voice, the kind of tone that suggests he is pulling up images from years ago, photo memories of his girls standing in the living room lined up by height in matching dresses.

at 25, i am just now beginning to see how right he is. this is a precious, precious thing, this life.

i have a packing envelope in which i keep a stack of photos that don't fit in any albums, photos that make me laugh, and make me wish my dad could have seen me at that moment. i've got a picture taken in the winter of my freshman year of college at a christmas party; it's of me casually interacting with my then-boyfriend who i refused to call my boyfriend until we had broken up. my friend becky told me she'd try to snap a photo of the two of us since i didn't want him to think we were actually together.

i've got a photo of me and my friend erin sitting on a couch laughing. the colors in the photo are all wrong, with us leaning against a couch draped in 1970s yellow, green and gold flowers. but she looks beautiful. my sister, i think, had snapped the photo while we were at the catacombs "studying." but above all, you can see that we are both happy. content.

i've got a photo and me and my friend justin sharing the pant leg of a pair of my pajama pants that stretch to ridiculously abnormal widths. justin was in a season of fro-ing out his hair and so the combination of hair and shared pant leg makes this a memorable one.

i've got a picture of me and shelly by her mom's station wagon after she dropped me off following our trip to madison our senior year of high school. i'm wearing what i thought was the perfect collegiate outfit. i was big into hemp necklaces then, and was wearing what would be the first of many wool mittens from one of many library mall vendors.

all of these pictures make me laugh. and it makes perfect sense that the conclusion i'd come to about all this would coincide with the ben folds song playing on my iPod. i am, indeed, the luckiest. what a thing to have the best friends in the world.

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here
And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know
That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest
What if I’d been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?
And in a white sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know
That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you
Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away
I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know
That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest