April 23, 2003

• It's a wire bound book, lavender on top, green at the bottom with an angel on the cover.  Gold embossed letters say, "If friendship is a sacred treasure, herein lies all my wealth."  Inside I've written names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and then scratched through and written the updated versions after marriages, moves, divorces, births, and amazingly perhaps, only one death.  I've heard it said that a person who has three good friends in a lifetime is doubly blessed.  I wonder how they define good friends?

  
  

  This week, I've had email correspondence with Faith, who's casual remark helped me solve a problem I've been stuck on for a couple weeks.  I've had two phone calls from Martha just catching up after a couple months in which she's been travelling around mostly out of touch.  This morning, I made arrangements with Mo (Maureen) to meet in Florida and share vacation this summer. 

  
  

  My friends have encouraged my interests beyond all reason, and probably to the irritation of my husband who wishes that I could be more like "normal" people.  I can't think of anything I could even be interested in talking about that I don't have at least one friend who knows more than I do on the topic.  None of them make me feel that my questions are unwelcome.  All of them have taught me things I couldn't learn from books. 

  
  

  Some of my friends also happen to be my family.  I didn't realize growing up how rare my family life was, and even now I'm more shocked than accepting when I hear people say that they haven't spoken to a brother or sister in months, or even sometimes years.  My little brother is halfway around the world, and in the past week, I've talked to him three times.  (www.bigzoo.com thank you, thank you for the cheap long distance)

  
  

  My friends live all over the world, come to think of it.  From Eliza in Colorado, Martha, Sam and Sandy in Minnesota, Maureen in Wisconsin, Faith in Ohio, Natasha in Atlanta, Mary in Virginia, to Yoni in Jerusalem I'm always confused about whether its a good time to call.  No matter what time I call Yoni, he tells me it's 2:00 AM so I don't even try to figure that one out anymore.

  
  

  I was trying to think how I could categorize my friends.  Truly, I can't.  But if I had to think of broad common ground, they tend to be either crafty or argumentative.  Or both.  I think it would be fun sometime to hold a craft fair/hands-on session with my friends in charge of booths and demonstrations.  You could learn anything from wood carving, to needlework, calligraphy to jewelry design and believe me I've tried them all.  Or if you wanted to talk literature, history, philosophy, etc. just pull up a chair and a coffee cup.  Tell 'em Terri sent you.

  • 3:30 pm
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