The Group Chat Named "Soup"

Six of us from my old job started a group chat in 2019 called "Soup," because the first message was a photo of a soup someone had made. Five years and three job changes later, it's still going, and it's still called Soup.

It's where we send photos of our dinners, our dogs and our terrible haircuts. It's where we announced two engagements, one new baby and one very large houseplant. It's where Dana sends a voice memo of her singing every Monday morning, badly, "to start the week right."

This spring, we finally met up in person for the first time in three years, in a little cabin in the Catskills. Within ten minutes, we were all in the kitchen making soup. Obviously.

We stayed up until three a.m. laughing about things that had happened in the chat years ago. I've never been so happy to see five people I talk to every day.