She was two years old when she watched curiously as my mom brought me home from the hospital on the worn out seat of a rickety cyclo. Our houses were across the alleyway from each other, separated by only a narrow space of about 4 feet.

So naturally, we became inseparable. Countless games of skipping ropes and jumping jacks and silly conversations over tin can telephones were had over that cramped alleyway.

And then we both became overachieving and ambitious adults and spent most of our 20s and 30s focusing on our careers across the globe from each other, but our souls were only separated by the 4-feet-wide alleyway that was just a toss of a tin can telephone string’s away.

And then just a few weeks ago, on my long awaited trip to Vietnam after 15 years of absence, we went back to visit the old neighborhood. So much has changed. I couldn’t recognize our old house, which has been remodeled to sleek and modern standards, along with the rest of the houses in the neighborhood. However, that familiar alleyway is still as narrow as it was in 1997.  No car will ever be able to enter this neighborhood, and if 2 mopeds pass by each other, one has to stop and yield to the other.

In some ways, the alley feels even smaller than she was when we were young, as if defiantly gatekeeping out the dizzying changes that have sprung upon the world around her. And I hope that, even this digital age, there are still children skipping ropes and releasing paper origami boats along this makeshift canal when summer day rain rolls by. 

Our houses are still just a ball’s throw away from each other, just waiting for the day when childish giggles echo from tin can telephones strung across their rusty balconies again.

Later, as we both were catching up over slow coffee and grumbling about the natural ailments that aging has brought on to us in our late 30s (back pain, knee pain, etc…), we both had two major epiphanies: 1) how blessed we are to have each other from the cradles to the day we can sit and complain about joint pain to each other, and 2) maybe we’re at the point in our lives where we can relax our grips from the daily grind and make plans to spend more time together.

Because when life gives you a blessing in the form of a best friend from the cradles, you should never wait to the day of the graves to grieve over regrets of missed laughter and chats over slow coffee.