August birthdays: round three

One day, in the summer of 2003, a 20-year-old girl got on an airplane at 6:00 a.m. in Southern California, wearing a Sleater-Kinney t-shirt like she often did when she was about to meet new people. She spent the trans-continental journey furiously reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which had been released at midnight. After a long plane ride, she was picked up at JFK International Airport by her aunt and uncle and driven to rural Putnam County, New York, where she had spent many childhood summers.

The following day, the girl's aunt and cousin drove her into Manhattan, where the girl would be living for the summer as a test-run before moving there permanently after her final year of college. The girl was relocating to New York to find what she wanted, though she couldn't quite define what that was. She knew, however, that whatever it was lived in New York City, and not in California, where she'd lived for the last two decades.

The girl and her boisterous New York aunt and cousin quickly completed the registration process for summer housing at New York University, and burst through a door on the fourteenth floor of Hayden Hall. They caught the room's resident by surprise. The girl dumped her things on the unoccupied bed on the right-hand side of the room, and marched over to introduce herself. "Hi, I'm Caitlin. I'm from California." she said loudly. The roommate responded, "My name is Weatherly, and I'm from Lafayette, Louisiana." The girl and her aunt and cousin invited the roommate to lunch at the nearby Cornelia Street Cafe, but mostly talked over her. Once lunch was over, the girl's aunt and cousin drove back to Putnam County, leaving her to bond with her new roommate.

The roommate, who had arrived the previous day, began unpacking some of her personal items: a tube of blue face wash, a copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The girl pulled the exact same face wash, and the exact same favorite novel from her LAX-tagged suitcase. This was creepy. The roommate removed a Sleater-Kinney t-shirt from her bag and set it out to wear the next day. This was very creepy. The girl and her roommate agreed to have dinner together, and discovered that they not only shared the same taste in favorite bands, novels, and face wash, but they both listed Ghost World as their favorite movie.

Strong forces were at work here. When the girl moved to U.C. Santa Cruz to start college two years earlier, she filled out a multi-page questionnaire about interests, sleeping habits, party habits, study habits, and various personality quirks. She ended up with the roommate from hell. When moving to NYU, she merely filled out her name and gender. She ended up with her long-lost sister. The girl and her roommate became fast friends and bonded over obscure commonalities. The roommate would often order burritos that were much too big for her appetite, and the girl would finish what was left. The girl's parents came to visit, and marveled at the way the girl and her roommate shared drinks and ate food off each other's plates, pausing only to finish each other's sentences. The two girls spent the summer exploring Manhattan, once ending up by accident in a dodgy Lower East Side neighborhood at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge while searching for a store. They discovered a neighborhood bar that showed new episodes of Sex and the City, and went there every Sunday evening. Soon, though, the summer was over.



The girl returned to California, and her roommate went back to Louisiana. They visited one another as often as possible while they finished school. The girl took a trip to Louisiana for the roommate's birthday,



and the roommate came to California twice.



Some time after graduating, they moved to different cities, in Oregon and New Jersey, respectively, but they still try to see each other as often as possible. They spent quite a bit of December 2005 together, eating at the Life Cafe like old times, and drinking whiskey and being silly in a friend's Jersey City apartment.



They saw each other again in 2007, when the girl brought her boyfriend, who is now her husband, to be inspected by the roommate who had just gotten married herself.



The two visited most recently in the summer of 2009, and are currently plotting their next get-together.



They send long and meandering e-mails to one another, sometimes daily. Today is the roommate's birthday, but the girl will always be the one who got a gift.

Happy birthday Weatherly, my dear long-lost sister. Words cannot describe how lucky I am to have you in my life.