Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig.

7

Spent the night in a hotel that was reminiscent of Esther’s Inn. If you’re from PG, you’ll understand. If not…oh well. But I tried to see if my little cousin was at work…nope day off… and then drove to the house of a friend I haven’t seen in…oh…15+ years. Also not home. Left my number with his son and as soon as I returned to the hotel…he called. Turned out he and his wife were walking the dogs… “small ones” I asked? Yes… “I passed you… twice.” Laughter. Carl, and little duster dogs. Too funny.

Oh well. We met up for a coffee this morning and it was like turning back the clock. Have you got any of those friends from the depths of time. Back for the days of Kindergarten?

I do. Three or four actually. And Carl is one of them. I think what I love most about him is that we have been friends since we were 5 years old, and I think I love him most for the fact that he’s always been like a brother. He was always the guy who made me smile. He was one of my two grad dates…. another story altogether. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for he and two other guys in high school…. well, suffice to say that life might be very different. I might be with another guy and not married to the fellow I am today. But that’s another story, related to two grad dates….

We each laughed and said “You haven’t changed a bit”. That’s a total lie of course, but fundamentally it’s true, and wonderful to be abel to say, and to hear.

I love friends who are always there, and for whom you are always available. Who don’t judge you, and who you know will be there even if you don’t see or hear from each other for years on end. Friends who you know you can just pick up wherever you left off with whom there are never any pregnant pauses. There is no friendship maintenance… because all that was figured out years and years ago. You are who you are, they are who they are, and the friendship is always what it will be. No subject clauses, no conditions. Just a hug as soon as you meet again, and a hug when you leave each other. And the knowledge that when you see each other again, it will be with just as much enthusiasm as this time. Carl ranks in that small percentage of people whom I truly do call friend. In every sense of the word.

True friends are like precious jewels, they are priceless in value and to be treasured beyond measure, but we have to bring them out a bit more often than we do because to hide them away is to do an injustice to their purpose.

I wish I’d had more time to spend up in Vernon after I completed my work, I would have liked to finally meet his wife, and apparently he would have liked to finally introduce his wife to “The Mysterious Paige”. But my flight was booked and we had to say goodbye.

Someone once said to me that if you can count five true friends when you die, you have lived a rich life. If that’s true, then I’m doing pretty well.