Friday night I found myself at a Taylor Swift concert, a notable occurrence because I don’t get out much–especially to large events, which are laden with people and loud noises (neither of which I like), and usually start around 7 (when I should be drawing my baaath) and end way past my bedtime (9:00). But one of my college friends has connections within the pop wunderkind’s kingdom, and so a few of us reunited in downtown Atlanta for the show.

Wading through the crowd at Philips Arena was like getting slapped in the face with a million blond ponytails full of glitter. While I wore my sensible but trendy “silk” pants from Target, I observed pre-teen girls (and their as-yet “straight” boyfriends) wearing Tay-Tay paraphernalia: red tutus, the sundress/cowboy boot country-pop combo; T-shirts bearing lyrics and album titles written in puff paint; signs begging for attention; and the piece de resistance: a duo dressed as bottles of Swift’s personal fragrance. My eyes darted wildly around in search of a bar.

Around 1:30 am, overtired, overstimulated, and away from my own bed, I realized that I was not going to fall asleep. I frantically dialed The Husband from the hotel room bathroom and told him I was heading home. A few minutes later, after the valet’s concerned pleas to be careful (glasses-sporting and makeup-less, I was not looking my sanest), I was on the road. The next morning, after sleeping in while TH manned breakfast duty, I ventured downstairs. “Watch!” TH stage-whispered in my direction, sitting on the kitchen floor and holding his hands out toward TK, who stood shakily then WALKED FORWARD TWO STEPS. My haze of sleeplessness was temporarily shattered and we fell as a family of three to the floor in an exuberant group hug. Had I not been dehydrated, I would have cried.

Because, as many of you know, TK is sixteen months old and a bit late to the walking game. But he also carries within his body a structural anomaly (I prefer to think of it as a design) that his doctors haven’t made sense of yet (hopefully they will after his MRI today–12 pm EST for all you pray-ers, thought-senders, and rain-dancers) but that undoubtedly has thrown a challenge between him and ambulation. To look at him, you’d never know it: he’s full of awareness and curiosity and grins and laughter and (if I may say so, and I may) good looks, and only a slight head tilt to the left belies any hint of trouble. None of us really know how fraught with or free from difficulty his daily movements are because he functions so well. But as his parents who have sat with him through hours of physical therapy and x-rays and evaluations and surgery recovery, TH and I know his story. And, as we celebrated on the kitchen floor, we felt the sort of victory that only those who are intimately acquainted with uncertainty can fully appreciate.

When Taylor blasted through her mic on Friday about love, my friend turned to me and snorted. “Come back to me in ten years and talk to me about love then,” she said, and I nodded an amen. The kind of love that sells tickets is belted out in an arena by barely-out-of-their-teens wearing lavish costumes and hoisted onto audience-sweeping mini-stages and accompanied by light shows and, at the end, blasts of confetti. As that confetti swirled around my head and eventually scattered around our feet, I looked down and thought about the love I’ve come to know, the love my friends have come to know: the love of waiting for answers, lying on cold tables, sitting in paper gowns, logging endless miles and collecting business cards and doctors’ names, feeling tension across the room from each other and letting commitment work on it until it gives way to forgiveness. Sure–glittery, confetti-strewn love is fun and pretty. But I prefer the real, raw thing. I prefer the kind you drive home for at 1:30 am, tired and ornery, so that the next morning, almost as if someone knew it would happen, you’re there for the true event.

Later on Saturday, a friend emailed me, exhausted from the social stamina of inhabiting a party for two hours, seeking refuge in like-mindedness, and again I nodded an amen. There are friendships that stretch across time because of what you’ve experienced together and how you’ve grown up alongside each other, in spite of personality differences and bedtime predilections. And there are friendships sustained through the speaking of the same native tongue, through a nearly identical view of the world. With one friend, you bond over “remember the time…” even though one of you could talk to a wall and the other can barely stand to leave her house; with the other, it’s more “I read this and knew you’d get it” and shared rueful glances across a room. Depth can be added by years or similarity, the way rooms become fuller as a house becomes a home.

To look at me (as long as it’s not 1:30 am after a concert), you’d wouldn’t know my structural design, the introversion I struggle against: not the generic “I’m a little quiet” sort but the kind that grows forlorn without frequent solitude, that often prefers music to voices, that leaves parties exhausted from the effort of finding words that flow so much more easily from my fingers than my mouth. Not many know how fraught with difficulty my daily movements in the world can be, how one step forward is a victory preceded by so much uncertainty. I’m thankful to have people in my life who are unlike me; otherwise we’d all be sitting on the couch in our PJs with the TV on, trying to avoid life and each other’s eyes. But I’m also thankful for the people who get it, for whom throwing a party is an act of bravery, who call me afterward to talk about how hard it was. Who leave the light on because they know there’s a chance I’ll roll in at 2 am, crowd- and battle-weary and needing to be back in my place, among my tribe, in my home.

“I spent a large part of the first half of my life as a city dweller, a large part of the second half as a countryman. In between, there were periods when nobody, including myself, quite knew (or cared) where I was…I have finally come to rest,” E.B. White wrote, and as one who lived anonymously in the city and under the radar with friends more fun than I, here is where the gratitude lies–in holding both close: the auditorium where grace is spoken to a crowd and the church where the pastor knows my name; the friends who draw me out and the ones who sit quietly beside me; and the family who hold a place, into the small hours of the morning, into which only I can fit.