Old Friends…..Memory Lane

“One of the greatest titles we can have is old friend. We never appreciate how important old  friends are until we are older. The problem is we need to start our old friendships when we are  young. We then have to nurture and grow those friendships over our middle age when a busy life and changing geographies can cause us to neglect those friends. Today is the day to invest in those people we hope will call us ‘old friend in the years to come.”  Grant Fairley

I have some friends that I’ve know since elementary school.  In the last few years, I have been lucky enough to rekindle ….no, remake… a friendship with them.  They are grown-ups, like me, older, with hidden gray hairs and wrinkles.  It’s typical for women our age.  Yet, when I see them, or hear their voices, my mind takes me back to playground times and cafeteria terrors.  I see them as they were.  I see the way they move is still the same.  I see the way they move and look and act looks so much like the way their moms moved and looked and acted.  I have to smile, inside myself, as I know they must see my mom…. or in my case, perhaps my dad…. in me.  That’s not a bad thing.

I like having these friends; they have a grounding effect on me.  We lived the same things in school, some things wonderful, some things horrid, and we saw these incidents with different eyes.  They have given me insight to things I didn’t understand, and I think I have given that back to them. We have known the same people for many years.  We can dredge up a memory of a science field trip, or a county fair, and together we can GO there.  You can’t take a new friend on a 35 year old field trip.

I don’t live in the past, but I do enjoy a visit there fairly often.  Just to see if it’s still there!!  It’s nice to travel there with an old friend, one who knows those backroads you missed!