My lifelong friends include Emma and Jean to whom I’ve been attached for 53 years – since we shared secrets and pranks in junior high school. They are the oldest chums in my Crone group, comprised of six women (and me) who make such a difference in my life that it is hard to quantify or describe. They are my sisters, my confidantes, my soulmates. They are the family I’ve lost; the support system I turn to in tough times, the zanies I laugh with till my sides hurt.
Among my long-distance friends whom I cherish are Elson, a lovely African man whom I met in Malawi over twenty years ago when I stayed at the hotel he was managing, and Lena, my Thai sister who guided me through the year that I lived in Chiang Mai. There are others from China, Bangladesh, Romania, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere who have enriched my life in ways both practical and poetic. (If you’re reading this essay, you know who you are!)
Then there are the friends I’ve made since moving to Vermont who add such a glow to my life. And there’s Peg, with whom I’ve recently reconnected after relying on Christmas cards for 37 years to keep in touch. There are friends of friends, kids of friends, and my kids’ friends.
I am so blessed with good and faithful friends that I’d like to declare a day for them – as a way to say thank you; I couldn’t do it without you; I love you. Because as Anais Nin knew, “each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive…”
To put it more mundanely, as Marlene Dietrich did, “It’s the friends you can call up at 4:00 a.m. that matter.” If you have friends like that, give them a shout out, because you, like me, have a rare and precious gift and such gems should not go unacknowledged.
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