Me, Him, The Four, The Cakes, The Laundry - The Life.

The Gallery – Friendship.

I’ve been a slack blogger this last month, but Tara’s prompt for The Gallery this week (which I’ve only just remembered) forced me to get something down.

Friendship. No difficulty this week.

I have one oh-so-very special one who has been on my mind recently. I’ve been a bit pants this last couple of months when she probably really needed me not to be – so this is a weeny little ‘I love you’ from me to her.

this is a couple of years ago, and No.1 has taken it so he's missing. A rare day out together - we do seem to have amassed quite a lot of children between us.

Pictures of us are rare – as are our meetings these days. The oldest, best ones are languishing in a box in the loft. More current ones are scarce as we’re too busy yapping and on child-control to pick up a camera. But this is one I do treasure, despite it being the least technically polished from my ‘favourites’ album.

We met when we worked the same Saturday job – I was 13, she was 15. We were the two Grammar girls in the Essex seafront cafe, and naturally started talking… and just immediately got that click you sometimes rarely, preciously get.

We moved through school together Monday nights in town for records, vege Burger Kings, and Dairy Milk from Woolworths. Thursday nights swimming and on to The Rose; I got married, she got a career, I had children, she got married, she had children as I had more children…

And here we are.

23 years later.

Jeepers.

I’m so happy to be her friend. I’m honoured and proud that I was the one she rang when she went into labour with her first and her husband was at the other end of the country. That she rang the minute she had given birth. In fact, a long list of really big happenings have been marked by phone calls – the latest being the biggest and saddest of them all.

In return she has been there steadfastly forever for me too, reliably silly or sensible or understanding and always intuitively Getting It – whatever the ‘IT’ may be.

I hate being 200 miles away, I want to be close enough for a coffee sometimes. But I love that we don’t speak for a couple of months, then pick up exactly where we left off. I love that she’s the only person other than C who just understands, with no need for explaining. And in fact, she understands back further than C was around – which seems impossible in itself. I love that she and C love each other as much as I love them, and that at the beginning they really really didn’t.

I love that just knowing she’s there if I need to talk to her can make the need seem less.

I tried to find a quote to finish off that I half-remembered being perfect about our friendship, and looked up a quote site. But it’s an impossible task. Reading through a list of quotes and sayings, any single one of them could be me and her. And that makes me more happy than I have ever told her, I think.

Btw – the Quote I was looking for was:

“When we honestly ask ourselves which friend in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ” ~Henri Nouwen

This was a post for Tara’s Gallery over on Sticky Fingers.

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