Any Other Way

It's really soothing and healing to have friends you can count on. I mean by that people who have hung out long enough for you to realize who they are and appreciate the fact that they have. My brother visited yesterday, a man of unique perspectives and a heart so big you can see it on the outside. He and I met through his brother, like a hundred years ago, and developed the friendship over the ensuing 30 years and when his brother's and my marriage dissolved we kept each other on as friends. I essentially won him in the divorce.

There are other friends like that, relationships with beautiful patina and dents and dings from the decades of active use and counted among the people that matter. One of them is always on my mind when I go to sleep at night, a time for quiet prayer and wishes of safekeeping.

They have shared life's baby steps, school and travel and self exploration and know how we are wired. No need to re-invent the wheel because we are part of each other's memories.

They powdered and diapered little bottoms and scooped up their toys and crabbed about them not eating peas while giving out popsicles. Just like me. (Sometimes it was my kids they were grousing about!)

Solid friends fell in love in tandem along with me and lived married lives that were hopeful and pure. We mourned and celebrated and longed together, cried over spilled marriages, and broken dreams, and parents passing away. All of us together learned to rebuild.

These kinds of friends stand in the supermarket and laugh aloud when they find just the right card because they get us. And they send it, too, and know our birthdays by heart.

It is wonderful to know someone thinks we are worth the trouble, for all our awkwardness and missteps as we sluff off our old skin and grow into the bigger, better person beneath.

We sometimes fall out of love with each other and grow impatient when life gets hairy and one sided. But we don't disappear entirely. We stand in the shadows, sensing when it is more important to be a spectator than a participant.

The end of the chapter will arrive, we know, and they will look for us sitting on a rock waiting with a smile and a hug just like always. To be there for this kind of friend and them for me: what a double blessing.