Happy Birthday, Miller!

My girlfriend Miller and I met in 1997, when she was hired at the firm at which I already worked, and I was tasked with training her. What I remember most about her first day was that every system in the office was going haywire and everyone was in a bad mood—which was appropriate preparation for the rest of her time there.

Miller loves to tell the story of how she hated basically me on sight. She was stuck at the reception desk, and I would blow by with knitted brows and a snarl, informing her brusquely, “I’m going for a smoke.” She thought, understandably, that I was a total bitch. Only later, when she was promoted, did she come to totally get it, as we would both blow by the new receptionist with knitted brows and snarls on our way to the sidewalk for a much-need smoke and a vent.

We became friends, though, on a very specific day that both of us can name. Miller had thrown out her back, and she was stuck at home by herself, barely mobile. A few years earlier, I had been in the same position, but I was living with someone; I hadn’t been on my own and couldn’t imagine how I would have gotten through it without his help. So, even though I knew Miller wasn’t too fond of me, I headed over to her place after work, armed with pizza and the intention of being her slave and giving her a laugh, and we’ve been friends ever since.

We’re different in many ways (Miller once told me that if she wears her heart on her sleeve, I wear my brain on mine), and so very, very alike in even more. I could share about a thousand different stories that would give an insight into why we get on as we do, but perhaps none so relevant, in light of our president’s Gropefest yesterday, as the one in which the Creepy Guy at the Office once tried to give Miller an unwanted backrub. I heard her scream from the other end of the hallway which separated our desks, “DON’T TOUCH ME!” then saw him scurrying into his office like a shamed puppy, right as my phone began to ring from Miller’s extension. I knew before I picked it up what she’d say: “Smoke break!” We must have laughed for nine million hours about that. I’m laughing now, even thinking of it.

When we first met, we lived a few blocks away from each other, and in the intervening years, our friendship has spanned two continents, as Miller lived in Ireland and then England, and then I lived in Scotland, while she was back in home, and then both of us back in the US but in separate states. Relationships in both our lives have come and gone. We’ve moved on to other jobs, other homes. But no distance, no change, has undermined the consistency of our friendship, and that’s truly more precious to me than I can say.

I love you, Miller, you kook, you saint, you wonderful woman. Happy birthday. May all your dreams come true this year.

And may we always be friends.