Friends

It is wonderful to be able to bring my laptop into this bright and cheery kitchen to type on. However, it is even more wonderful to be able to share relaxing and fun time with very close and longtime friends. I am very pleased to say that I have just said goodbye to both Shayla and Jessica who I have not seen in a very long time. We have known each other since first grade, during the days of field days and cardboard box racecars. We have been with one another through moves, with Jessica and Shayla moving with their family to Palm Bay during elementary school and with my family moving to North Carolina during high school. We have been together through schools, from when we went to Harbor City Elementary together until now with Jessica at the University of Florida and I at Campbell University, Anna at Foard High School and Shayla at Palm Bay High School. We have been together as partners and friends, with Jessica and I the same age and in the same grade for all of our educational lives and with Anna and Shayla having two years difference in their ages and grades. As Anna approaches her senior year in high school Shayla starts her sophomore year. They have always been friends, just like Jessica and I who met through our mothers during our first grade class together. I would spend time at Jessica’s house more than at any other friend’s, swimming together, spending the night together, going to Disney World, going Trick-or-Treating, telling stories, spending afternoons together after school and now staying at each other’s houses or relative’s houses when we travel near one another. Yesterday in fact was another such occasion, as Jessica and Shayla stayed the night here at my Big Nanny’s house in Gainesville, Florida. We were able to talk for hours, go out for dinner at Leonardo’s, watch The Incredibles and Big Fish until two in the morning, eat a big breakfast, watch Spongebob Squarepants, make paper swans, watch home movies and then make plans for when we might see each other again. I must confess many of these activities were biased in my favor (Leonardo’s, The Incredibles, Big Fish, Spongebob Squarepants and the home movies for example) but there were many other activities which were not, such as the Mary Kate & Ashley movie, the cellphone talks and well, there weren’t a whole lot of others. Sometimes we get the long end of the stick…
All and all, friendship is a beautiful play between friends, their wants, their dreams, their fears and their hardships. With close friends we share our deepest secrets, our openest vulnerability and some of our most memorable moments. You won’t see each other for years, but in minutes you act like you always have. Your friends remember who you are and secretly you remember who you are too, because they are there. “Friends & Family” make sense together because they can become inseparable. Scores of our childhood memories are woven through experiences with friends that cannot be replaced with anything else. Who I am, lessons I’ve learned and beliefs that I will never forget have so much to do with those friends in my life, who have taught me, laughed with me, walked with me and played with me. They can be anyone and friends in my life have been anyone from anywhere. Maybe that is why laughs and smiles can become the shortest distance between two people. Strangers or families, friends or peers, we have people all around us ready to be friends. I would not be who I am without a Jessica in my life and for that, I feel like I have a great legacy to live up to. I hope that I can be the kind of friend a friend wants to have…to Jessica, to my family, to my friends and to those people who aren’t my friends, yet.