Listening to Mandolin Orange this morning… after Bad Religion and the Dog Town soundtrack (quite a mix)
I’m missing my friends today.
It’s the kind of missing that makes my heart smile with both remembrance and longing.
The kind of missing that fills my head and belly with appreciation, drinking in the memories.
I keep smiling.
And missing.
And smiling.
I’ve been so fortunate, to have so many wonderful friends.
There are so many special moments that are unbound by time or space.
I feel the memories nourishing me this morning, a part of my blood, running through my body, filling my system.
I want to sit back down with you, in the flesh, and just hang together.
So, I do, in my mind.
I can see one friend smiling through campfire light.
Another next to me in the lawn under the stars, another swimming at Canadaigua Lake.
I feel you through phone calls and laughter and tears.
I feel you through the memory of holding hands in hospital walls, or a late night park run.
I feel you dancing our hearts out at our mountain refuge home.
I see the fireflies in an open field, sharing magic together.
I feel you in a smile though the halls at school.
I feel you in spontaneous, unplanned, unbridled fun.
I see you biting into a chicken patty at Lolis’s and telling me some crazy story.
I see you meeting me for a section of a cross country, I’ve gotta see and feel more trip, filling my dress with as many peaches as it will hold, drinking from a fresh water spring coming out of a rock.
I can feel you, I can feel you all.
You have mattered to me.
I hold you, and that young and opening Kori, with a wide, through space and time smile.
I’ve been so lucky, to have so much love throughout my lifetime, to have friends that have been family.
I’m so lucky, to have known so much love.
And… it’s also not luck.
It’s because I risk caring.
I love deeply.
I make the effort and take the time to know a person’s heart.
I risk sharing mine.
So this morning, along with the missing and the longing, there is also a deep and wonderful acknowledgement; an acknowledgement of what friendship and openness can bring into a life.
Thanks and endless love going out from my heart to yours.
If I’ve done my job, lived my life right, even if we haven’t spoken in years and years, you each know who you are.
<3
*image by Daan Stevens