For Charissa

Once upon a time two sisters met two sisters and a sisterhood grew and 22 years later half of us are married and half of us are going on  solo adventures, and all of us are happy and still loving each other.

Charissa moves to the Big Apple today. She's flying with as many of her belongings as we could stuff into her suitcases. We comically weighed them on an itty bitty scale. We laughed at inappropriate conversation topics. We've all cried. A lot. 

I don't have adequate words to explain what this girl means to me. I can't write this post without sobbing and feeling nastolgic. I've watched Charissa grown. I've watched her fall, hard, but she always gets back up and runs full steam ahead.

She is one of the hardest working people I know. Never afraid to follow her dreams. Encouraging, cheerful, hilarious, and always there when I'm having a panic attack over incredibly stupid things. 

I've travelled to distant lands with her, suffered through Hurrican force winds that broke our tent, climb on roof tops, run down the street from obvious Serial Killers, got "fake drunk" too many times to count, played Indians, built forts, played dolls, and cried over boys who really truly broke our hearts, and ones that were just dumb to let us go, because obviously we are treasures. All with this girl.

And now she's going to be in an Off Broadway production. And she's going to take New York by storm. Ho's gonna kick ass (inside joke because I can't type "go" at 7 am apparently). I'm going to miss her face, but I am SO SO SO excited for her. 

She deserves every good thing that has happened in the last few days, and this week has been the worst sort of bittersweet for everyone.

So go go go. Go be brave, and bold, and bright, and beautiful. You already are Charissa dear. Show Broadway what they've been missing. And when you meet that guy you're dreaming of , Tony, know that we all knew you two would end up together. We never for second doubted that you would go off and do amazing, wonderful, fantastic, glorious things with your one precious life.

The next 22 years are going to be amazing. We will probably still cry over dumb boys. We will still laugh at inappropriate conversations. We will still have beach Peanuts battles. We will get to fly all over the country (and maybe even the world!) reuniting. And we'll always cry when it's time to leave.

I love you I love you I love you. 

Never ever forget that.

Safe travels.

Be wonderful.

(If you see Steven Spielburg this time, tell him our story and that I'm conveniently still in the LA area if he needs a wildly talented singer and mostly decent actress who's also a fantastic person. 

Maybe ask him if he'll sign our picture that he took nearly 10 years ago.)

I love you.

Forever.

P.S. 

See you in May fingers crossed!