When I was younger, in my early teens, I had a friend. I will call her Rebekah, which makes sense because that was her name. Rebekah grew up in a cult. I spent many months, years, in fact, at the compound with Rebekah. My parents were cool with that for a variety of reasons. Number one, they never paid attention to where I was. Number two, we led a very cult-like existence. Number three, well, if I went to three I would go to four and then five and then I would be talking about something other than what I am talking about. The point is that I spent a ridiculous amount of my formative years at this compound, this camp, with Rebekah. The story of the relationship between Rebekah and Cordelia is fascinating, but ultimately it is not a nice story. You don't realize until later that it is not a nice story, but I know it, and now you know it. It is a terrible story, but on the way there were great stories and amazing experiences and a really, really good friend that I will probably miss until the day I die. Today is one piece of that, this story, right now. It was a camp.

It was a camp, see. In Jamacha. If you go out to Jamacha and leave your car you can feasibly walk in to Mexico. It is done, and it is done often. It is in the middle of nowhere. It was a great camp. It was a great place to be a young adolescent, provided you were unaware of what was going on around you. Rebekah and I were too focused on what was going on in our heads to pay much attention to what was going on around us. I would go to the camp, I would go there and since there were no phones I would assume that my parents knew where I was. It was miles, miles from them. Miles measured in more than distance. It was a world away, a different life, but still one that I knew. And Rebekah's family, her family, there were so many of them. You do not know who is who in these places. Her mother loved me. And her other mother, and her brother's mother, and they were good to me. And we helped a lot, sometimes. Sometimes we would wander off into the woods and not come back until the frost came, because, why not? What were we missing? But when we were around, which was not often, we would help.

Once we were helping in the freezer. It was this giant, mind boggling freezer. It had to be, because there had to be enough food to feed the entire family for however long a standoff might take. When you think 'family', I do not think that you imagine the amount of people there were. So it was a big freezer. And we got our winter clothes on, and went. Until now it did not occur to me to wonder why we had winter clothes in San Diego, but then hundreds of people freeze to death in Tijuana every year. So we had winter clothes. And we were in the freezer, going through each item, tossing whatever was expired. Reading, tossing. Singing. Reciting poetry that we had in our head, whatever it may be. With Rebekah it was always about exile, redemption, vengeance. With me it was always Dylan Thomas, and always And Death Shall Have No Dominion. I don't remember the first time I read it, I remember only that it became a mantra. Useless situations, reciting it over and over, huddled somewhere. And death shall have no dominion. It made no sense to me, but I ate it, I became that line.

So we were in the freezer, tossing, tossing, counting breaths and checking dates. And I came on a vat of something that said November 19. And I said Oh hey, November 19, that is my birthday. And Rebekah said Toss it, that was two days ago.

Toss it, that was two days ago. So I did. And I had a vague understanding that throwing out that vat meant that I was now seventeen years old. And it meant nothing. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen stop. They are numbers. We are girls, and we are in a freezer, and that is a number. And we were no younger or older than we had been at that time last week, or last month, or last year. And when Rebekah got pregnant with the twins and married the boy from the compound and became that thing that we hated, I remembered her in that freezer. A girl, no older than myself. I know that she was older than I was, and is still older than me today, and maybe, possibly will always be older than I am. But in that moment, in the freezer, and in many moments in the following years, through the things we saw and the places we went and the people we ran from, Rebekah was youth, Rebekah was immortal, and Rebekah was happy.

Tonight I had dinner with a friend. If I wanted to, I could not express to her how important she is. To me, to our friends, to the world around her. Tonight she hosted an astounding assortment of people, and they all love her. Every one of them, and that right there says something about her that I could not capture. The people at her table, the people in her home, the people that will come out and eat and laugh and be vulnerable in her name. It is her birthday. It is your birthday, you. You, today was for you and tonight was for you and the laughter and the happiness and the family that grew from your table, that is not something that you walk into. Or out of. Go around the room and try to figure out where these people meet, in their own lives. The physicist and the cutter and the photographer and the gardener and the torch, the geek and that beautiful little girl. Where do they meet, except in your home? And look at the lives, the stories that they bring. Amazing people, and these are your friends, these are the people that love you. I sat with strangers and talked and listened and called them by their names, because they are your friends and that makes all the difference in the world. I forgot that they were strangers and quickly they stopped being so. Tonight, and tomorrow, and as long as we have this and protect it and appreciate it, tonight we are youth, and we are immortal, and we are happy. Tonight we were happy, Lori, and tomorrow we will be happy and even when we are not at our brightest, shining best, we, and you, can be happy in the knowledge that there is always this, there is always this community, there is always this family that loves you. Happy birthday.