On Sommer's 35th

My friend Sommer would have turned 35 today. She died in a car accident a few months before we graduated from high school in 1995. I myself will be 35 this May, and that seems natural enough, but to imagine Sommer that same age boggles my mind: I didn't get to see even a 19-year-old Sommer, after all, or make it through my twenties with a "twenty-something" one, I didn't get to celebrate our 30th birthdays with her. . . .Som is always my just-turned-18-year-old buddy.

I had a cheerful-looking bouquet delivered to her mom's house today, and tonight I celebrate my sweet girl in a way I think she'd love: Watching her favorite movie, Last of the Mohicans, and eating a batch of cookies my mom had jokingly named after her since she loved them so much and used to request them when she'd come home with me after school. "Wow!" she told her when my mom explained the new name for these most-basic chocolate cookies, "I've never had a cookie named after me before!" Goofball. :) I don't know if I'll be able to get through the movie without bawling--I have only ever seen it with Sommer, one Friday night in 1994 that found us sprawled out on her waterbed to watch it during a sleepover, and I haven't been able to bear it since she died--but I am going to sit down with a few of her cookies and some tea soon and try again. I remember enough about the film to know I will have to mute it during Clannad's hauntingly beautiful song "I Will Find You," for it was on a mix tape Som had given me and it shreds my heart every time I hear it. ("No matter where you go, I will find you ~ If it takes a long long time ~ No matter where you go, I will find you ~ If it takes a thousand years. . .") But I will try. I will try for you, Sommer! Hopefully, my love of actor Daniel Day-Lewis, if not my love of Sommer, will be enough to see me through it. (This is when 17-year-old Sommer and Val would look at his photo above and utter a giggly "Hubba-Hubba!" to each other.) ;)

As Movie Night begins here for me, please give your own friends some extra love and attention. I do what I can for Sommer now, and in the end, I believe love and prayers (and chocolate cookies and Daniel Day-Lewis) really must be enough, but I would give so much for one more of her headlock-bear hugs and to hear her raucous laughter one more time. 

♥

P.S.) If you'd like to join me in baking
some "Chocolate Sommers":

 Mix one box of chocolate cake mix,
two eggs, and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil.

Drop or shape the cookie dough however
you wish, and bake at 350 degrees for
about ten minutes.

You can do this with any flavor of cake mix
to turn it into cookies, but "Chocolate Sommers," 
are, of course, the classic recipe.    :)