Circa March 2014. It was a night we started too late, just talking, standing in a dorm room, then drinking in a dorm room, and crying a little in a dorm room. Then as the minutes and hours ticked by it became a decision, tinged with just the right amount of alcohol, that we should stay up all night. It became googling what time the sun would rise and the first train we could take and could we do it, should we do it.
Knowing us, no we should not and would not. It was not like us to be up late or to pour the vodka into the Harry Potter themed flask and put on our winter coats and just go, early as we could, to catch the blue line to Revere Beach.
But on that day, that night, we did. The sun was coming up just as we arrived and the beach was empty and nearly frozen but we sat on the cold sand and passed the flask back and forth and there was magic in that — the kind you can’t plan or recreate.
After, there was a greasy breakfast, a nap, and seeing Divergent in theaters for the second time in three days because it is a very good movie to this day.
I say all this for Cara today because she is graduating law school — or rather, graduated law school — today. Which is a big fucking deal and a lifetime away from where we were, six years ago, on that beach. But that wild goodness in her that took care of me (that takes care of me) has only grown more powerful (and now with sharp tools of a law degree) as she looks to take on the world by helping and serving and changing what she can (and what she can do is a whole lot).
I am so proud of her and to know her. Happy motherfucking graduation day.
With Love,
Natalie