The Cellos

We spent our wedding anniversary weekend celebrating with great friends, Snelling and Minnehaha Cello, in Chicago. The Cellos are those kinds of friends who make you glad you spent way too much on a fancy liberal arts education - just to meet people like this.

Calhoun and Minnehaha have known each other since they were freshmen in college and lived in the same dorm. Even though I graduated with them I didn't actually meet Calhoun until we were juniors and didn't get to know the whole gang until we started dating as seniors. Although Snelling is a few years younger than we are, we started dating our men around the same time and have gotten to know each other more and more over the years.

After college Calhoun, Minnehaha, and a few others spent years sharing their homes and lives as everyone worked odd jobs and decided what to do with the rest of their lives. There were lots of VB House dinners, movies and wine nights. Some other ladies have come and gone since those first days after college, but Snelling and I have been around for a long time and I think that is makes for wonderful friendships between us and the Cellos.

The Cellos live in one of those super trendy downtown Chicago lofts, none of the walls go all the way up and the only doors are the main door into the apartment and the two bathroom doors. When we stay with them we stay in one room and across the hallway, through the open spaces, sleep the Cellos. Their furry cat, Dimitri, runs from room to room playing chew toy with our toes. I love staying with them and I love that we have the kind of relationship that doesn't flinch when we are sleeping across the room from each other. I love it even more when it means we can do our wedding traveling together, and share the cost of travel by staying in the same room.

But, we've come a long way from undergrad, and we've even come a long way from the years after undergrad. It has become strange to realize that we have been in this situation for more than 5 years - sharing rooms and spaces on overnights, walking around in our sweatpants and nursing our morning coffees together. I sometimes worry that eventually, we're all going to wake up and realize that we're too old to hang out with each other in our old college sweatshirts.

I'm sure that day will come eventually, in 60 years or so?

In the meantime I will look forward to all the weekends we will share with them, in our sweatpants.