silver and gold

I am unbelievably lucky to have made a few good friends in my life. I was not ever the kind of kid that did that easily. In fact I took a goodly number of ass-kickings in elementary and junior high and spent most of high school as a bookish wallflower type, the kind of girl the geeks always fell in love with because I was more accessible than the high school beauties that roamed the halls. My modest parade of suitors included more than one D&D player, boys from the marching band and my best friends' brother. My friends were mostly their friends.

However, in third grade I was paired up with a beautiful little blonde girl who, for reasons that still escape me, seemed to like me as much as I liked her. I was her plain brown shadow for many years and some ways still am, though I am comfortable in this role now. She's one of the only people whose personality can immediately eclipse my own. It sort of feels good.

In college I finally hit the friend jackpot after a long dry spell of casual friendships in high school -- I now had half a hall full of friends to call my own. And then that summer, I went to work as a camp counselor and met two girls who changed my life. One poor soul I subjected to quite a bit of needling (my mama always said they tease you because they like you) and the title "Mother Nature" which still survives today, despite her best efforts to kill it. The other was a gentle girl who always smiled but never said a whole lot. She had the most common sense of any person I'd ever known and the wildest head of thick red hair I'd ever seen.

So there they are. My three rocks. Jesus had Peter, I have the Tabby Cat, Frau Lobster and the Deester. They are, despite their own trials of abuse, divorce, miscarriage, illness, special needs kids, financial duress and bad hair days, the safe harbors that I pull in to when the storms of my life become unbearable. They shelter me still.

I think it's important to make new friends and I have made a few since those muggy, smoky, silly, sleepless days of childhood and young adulthood. But I could not have made my new friends without finally having learned how to be a friend myself and what a true friend looks like: these are lessons they taught me. They taught me about emergency roadtrips, holding hands in the emergency room, the strength of the human heart, crazy drunken laughter, God, family, horses and the integrity of the one-match fire. I really, really love them and I hope they know.

Since it's Towanyak Tuesday on "McBrideFamilyblog", I too will sing my song at the council fire:

"Make new friends but keep the old,
one is silver and the other gold
A circle's round, it has no end
that's how long I want to be your friend."