The Blessings of Old Friends

What a wonderful gift friends are.  Sometimes when friends separate due to life’s interference, the friendship fades away. The memories are still there, the love and caring is still there, but the people are miles and ‘times’ away.

Some of the wonderful things about the internet, email and Facebook are that you can still feel “right there” so that when you do get a chance touch base with your friends, it feels just like they or you never left.  This day I had the chance to reconnect with one of my very special friends in life, Laura.  I stayed with her at her house when I visited Alaska last year.  Laura is a very sweet soul, kind-hearted, giving, funny and loyal.  You don’t get too many of those in your lifetime.

Laura’s daughter lives in Redmond, about 20 minutes north of Bend and she was down here “on the outside” visiting.  I told her I would take her out to lunch, my treat, so we could have a little time together.  All Laura had to do was give me the address and I would enter it into my GPS and that those directions would lead me right to Kimmie’s front door.  Oh I would have never found Kimmie’s place with pen and paper, I am directionally dyslexic.  I don’t know if that’s a word but it IS a condition. 

So when I showed up and rang the doorbell, Laura opened the door and the first thing she said was, “You made it!  It worked!”, her expression was cute.

She invited me in and we sat in Kimmie’s living room and had a soda, chatted for awhile and took some pictures and off we went to have lunch at Mazatlan.  We celebrated and saluted our friendship and meeting with a wonderfully delicious margarita.   We then ordered CHICKEN chimichangas but when they arrived, they both were beef!  We just thought the heck with it, we didn’t want to wait anymore and they were good so we let that one go.

Of course, the visit wasn’t long enough and we soon had to part—mainly because the both of us got the ‘sleepies’ and we wanted to go home and take a nap!  Ah, the graciousness of true good friends…

I’ll see you again Laura, and thank you for being my friend.