Tonight I am grateful for my friends. I have been alive for over 50 years–now closer to 60 than 50 actually–and I am blessed to still have a few friends in my life who go back nearly as far as my family members do. I’m not in touch with some of them as I used to be, and with others, like my childhood friend joHn, I don’t see them face to face very often. I haven’t seen him physically in many years, but we keep in touch through the magic of Facebook and have recently swapped messages back and forth on a wide variety of subjects from music (he’s a singer/songwriter/performer back in our hometown) to current events to where I could live in Ireland if I ever decided to take a break from the US, which at times is sorely tempting.
I have known joHn since I was about five years old–I don’t think we were in kindergarten together, and I can’t remember if he was in Sister Thomas Marie’s first grade class with me or not, but we were for sure best buds on the playground in elementary school. Unlike me, joHn still lives in our hometown; in fact he has returned to live in the house he grew up in, the one I used to ride my bike down to to see if he wanted to play. There’s something comforting about having old school chums who remember who you are and can reminisce about things very few people can. joHn is such a friend. I wish I knew where my friend Julie was. She’s another elementary school friend whom I haven’t seen or heard from in many years and yet I feel that if I were to find her and send her a quick note we could pick right back up where I left her the last time I visited. I’ve known both of them since I was a small child, they are among those of whom I will always hold fond memories.
Then there’s Pat, my best friend from college, with whom I chat every few weeks or so. We met during my junior year (her senior year) in college and became fast friends in spite of how different our personalities are. We later spent a stretch of time together as single parents–she raising her son and only child and me raising my two kids. We swapped stories, exchanged advice, took our kids on all kinds of excursions together, and leaned on one another for emotional and social support. Nowadays when we talk it’s often for well over an hour, sometimes two, chatting about simple things: family, significant others, work, etc. There’s an easy reliability to my relationship with Pat that’s comfortable and real and I love her like one of my sisters.
I’m fortunate to count my ex-husband among my close friends. We’ve now been divorced for longer than we were married, and managed, through all the difficulties of separation and divorce to weather the initial rocky time of anger and grief through grace and forgiveness now to friends. It was our role as co-parents to our two children that created the opportunity for us to remain connected, as we always will be. By working together to be good parents we were able to put aside the issues that could have crippled our relationship and by extension harmed our children. In the end we’ve been able to build a lasting friendship that each of us values.
I’ve been blessed to have made friends over the years who have enriched and blessed my life. And while my siblings remain the dearest people in my life, along with my children, I count my friends right behind them. As the old song says, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold.” So it is with my friends, gold and silver and precious gems. I am deeply grateful to each of them for who they are and who they’ve been in my life. May they all know happiness and the fruits of happiness. So be it!
