In a few weeks, I’ll be with my family celebrating my Dad’s 80th birthday.
He’s struggling physically with post-polio syndrome, but his mental skills are sharp as ever. We’re a small family, most of the people we share DNA with have passed on.
One of the people coming quite a distance to celebrate with us is my friend Diane. We’ve technically known each other since we were six-months-old. We got close in sixth grade - and the threads of our lives have woven in and out over more than 50 years.
If that’s not a blessing, I don’t know what is.
Today’s wind and cold rain may turn to snow, but it does not stop the birds and squirrels from their morning activities.
It’s a busy time for most species; territory needs to be defined, homes built, families nurtured to adulthood - all in just a few weeks.
I think back over my life and some things just happen. A fifty year friendship is not something anyone can design or calculate.
There was a period of time, right after high school, when we had little or nothing to share. I was host and engineer on college radio, protesting the war, holding down a 18-credit semester college course load, and exploring the possibilities of independent living. She was taking a secretarial course, preparing to marry and dreamed of having a family and living in Vermont.
But time passes and we learn life lessons and that must be the definition of magic.
My friend Diane is willing to drive 8 hours to spend 2 hours with my Dad, who, in some ways is her Dad. We ate dinner at my house and her house all through junior high and high school. I still laugh when I think of how Diane mustered her best debate skills to try to convince my parents that the potato chip is a vegetable.
And I still weep when I think of the note Diane sent when my Mom died. It read “Ida taught me to eat vegetables.” It’s true, my Mom had a dinner time rule: the “no thank-you helping.” Anyone eating at our table was expected to show respect for the effort that went into the meal by taking a 3-bite portion of whatever was served. Food allergy was the only exception to that rule.
These memories are the ties that bind. They are more precious than any amount of property or money.
In 25-years, if I live, I’ll be 80-years-old. A 5-year-old me remembers staring at a 15-year-old farm hand and thinking he was old. A 10-year-old me remembers calculating that I’d be 48 in the year 2000 - a time impossibly far away.
There are few things I’d change in my life - none if it meant the loss of even one of those memorable moments.