I Am Thankful for My Friends: Amy
I once let my friend Amy remove a splinter from my palm. She was pregnant with her first kid - a boy, it turned out - and we were hanging out for the final time before she officially became a mom. I flipped out when I saw the splinter - it was on the thick side, and it was in there pretty deep. I squeezed my eyes shut tight while Amy went after it with a sterilized needle. A few minutes later she told me it was out, and I almost didn’t believe her. It hadn’t hurt at all. “Oh, you are going to be the best mother,” I told her.
Amy is an amazing mom, as I knew she would be. She now has two boys - regular readers of this blog know about them already, the famed Madden and Brody, ages almost 6 and just-turned 3, respectively. Here they are; aren’t they gorgeous?
They are two of the greatest loves of my life and I feel a kind of ownership over them. Amy lets me share the boys with her, let’s me occasionally pretend that they’re my own - which is just the greatest gift. When they do or say something particularly cute and adorable, I just want to tell everyone. Recently Madden was reading a book with his grandmother and he asked her who the book was dedicated to. She flipped to the dedication page and showed it to him. “But I don’t know who that is,” he said. “It’s someone the author knows,” his grandmother explained. Madden shook his head. “When Courtney writes a book, she always dedicates it to someone that I know.”
SINCERELY, KATIE was dedicated to Amy and our friend Lindsay. I know it meant a lot to her, and it meant to lot to me to put her name there. I am so bad at keeping secrets when I’m excited about them, and I couldn’t wait to show her. The galleys arrived and I was bursting about it - I told her over the phone, even though my intention had been to wait and bring the galley over and watch her flip to the dedication page and discover it herself.
But then the dedication seems like such a little thing when I think about all that Amy does for me - all the dinners I’ve had at her place, how she listens and counsels me through every crisis, the times she’s kept her kids from naps or birthday parties because I asked her to bring them to my readings, how she lets me go on and on about my book ideas, and reads sample chapters, and just stays on me in a way that keeps me going. No one believes in me like Amy does, especially when it comes to my writing. She tells me all the time and I know she means it because she never says anything she doesn’t mean. And here’s the thing, Amy can be cynical. Okay, perhaps cynical is the wrong word, more like unwaveringly realistic. We’re different in that I tend to go into situations and think, Oh yeah, I’ll probably win the lottery, and I bet that celebrity would totally want to be friends with me. Amy reins me in (although she’s wrong, don’t you think? I likely will win the lottery, and I’m sure I’ll become friends with Sheryl Crow someday). But when it comes to my work, Amy encourages me, and challenges me, and pushes me, and her faith in me makes me stop doubting myself. The other day she told me she’d noticed I’d stopped flipping out about things the way I used to, and I think that’s because I have her in my corner. As long as I know she’s there, I feel safe.
There are some things we clash over - I like to get to the movies early, to watch the previews, and Amy hates the previews. In fact, I like to get everywhere early, and Amy’s perpetually late. That’s actually the only fault I think she has. That and she doesn't take enough pictures, but I pride myself on being the one to take the kids' pictures; it is the thing I can do to earn my keep.
Amy is just so good, so capable, so trustworthy, so honest, so everything I want to be. Aside from watching the boys occasionally, I feel like I lean on her more than she leans on me. Sometimes I look at her and wonder how I got to be so lucky to be her friend. I would be lost without her. I would do anything in the world for her.
A couple weeks ago, she told me this story about the boys - yet another adorable story. They were having a conversation about all the people they were related to - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. One of the boys asked how they were related to me, and Amy told them we weren’t technically related. The boys were incredulous. All this time, since I’m over there all the time, they just assumed we were family. “I told them sometimes you pick friends who end up being like family,” Amy told me. So that’s how I got so lucky. Amy is my friend, but at this point she’s my family too - and she’s stuck with me!
Read About All My Friends!
Courtney
Allyson
Mom
Lindsay
Amanda
Brody
Arielle
Llen
Gayle
Amy is an amazing mom, as I knew she would be. She now has two boys - regular readers of this blog know about them already, the famed Madden and Brody, ages almost 6 and just-turned 3, respectively. Here they are; aren’t they gorgeous?
They are two of the greatest loves of my life and I feel a kind of ownership over them. Amy lets me share the boys with her, let’s me occasionally pretend that they’re my own - which is just the greatest gift. When they do or say something particularly cute and adorable, I just want to tell everyone. Recently Madden was reading a book with his grandmother and he asked her who the book was dedicated to. She flipped to the dedication page and showed it to him. “But I don’t know who that is,” he said. “It’s someone the author knows,” his grandmother explained. Madden shook his head. “When Courtney writes a book, she always dedicates it to someone that I know.”
SINCERELY, KATIE was dedicated to Amy and our friend Lindsay. I know it meant a lot to her, and it meant to lot to me to put her name there. I am so bad at keeping secrets when I’m excited about them, and I couldn’t wait to show her. The galleys arrived and I was bursting about it - I told her over the phone, even though my intention had been to wait and bring the galley over and watch her flip to the dedication page and discover it herself.
But then the dedication seems like such a little thing when I think about all that Amy does for me - all the dinners I’ve had at her place, how she listens and counsels me through every crisis, the times she’s kept her kids from naps or birthday parties because I asked her to bring them to my readings, how she lets me go on and on about my book ideas, and reads sample chapters, and just stays on me in a way that keeps me going. No one believes in me like Amy does, especially when it comes to my writing. She tells me all the time and I know she means it because she never says anything she doesn’t mean. And here’s the thing, Amy can be cynical. Okay, perhaps cynical is the wrong word, more like unwaveringly realistic. We’re different in that I tend to go into situations and think, Oh yeah, I’ll probably win the lottery, and I bet that celebrity would totally want to be friends with me. Amy reins me in (although she’s wrong, don’t you think? I likely will win the lottery, and I’m sure I’ll become friends with Sheryl Crow someday). But when it comes to my work, Amy encourages me, and challenges me, and pushes me, and her faith in me makes me stop doubting myself. The other day she told me she’d noticed I’d stopped flipping out about things the way I used to, and I think that’s because I have her in my corner. As long as I know she’s there, I feel safe.
There are some things we clash over - I like to get to the movies early, to watch the previews, and Amy hates the previews. In fact, I like to get everywhere early, and Amy’s perpetually late. That’s actually the only fault I think she has. That and she doesn't take enough pictures, but I pride myself on being the one to take the kids' pictures; it is the thing I can do to earn my keep.
Amy is just so good, so capable, so trustworthy, so honest, so everything I want to be. Aside from watching the boys occasionally, I feel like I lean on her more than she leans on me. Sometimes I look at her and wonder how I got to be so lucky to be her friend. I would be lost without her. I would do anything in the world for her.
A couple weeks ago, she told me this story about the boys - yet another adorable story. They were having a conversation about all the people they were related to - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. One of the boys asked how they were related to me, and Amy told them we weren’t technically related. The boys were incredulous. All this time, since I’m over there all the time, they just assumed we were family. “I told them sometimes you pick friends who end up being like family,” Amy told me. So that’s how I got so lucky. Amy is my friend, but at this point she’s my family too - and she’s stuck with me!
Read About All My Friends!
Courtney
Allyson
Mom
Lindsay
Amanda
Brody
Arielle
Llen
Gayle