Let me tell you a story about friends.
I have several best friends, all of them are astounding young women in nearly every way. Consider the possibility that I have changed their names for your and their protection.
Jamari
I met Jamari almost 17 years ago. I remember the day well despite it’s distance in the past. Our parents had both deposited us in the nursery at our church, we had two hours. She was a completely silent and rather tiny, we played baby dolls together and shared a little red wagon. Since that day we’ve been magnificent friends. Many if not most of my life’s adventures have been with her, from protecting our forts from ferocious invaders, to tea parties, to encounters with sinister bovines, to searching for lost scientists in barren deserts. Some of our adventures together have been imagined, others actual, all of them real. Several times we’ve experienced the dreadful adventure of living far away from each other. Every time, we write, and call, use telepathy, and somehow end up changing and growing at the same rate. Tonight she sent me a text message that said, “You’re amazing!” There was no preamble, no reason, it was completely spontaneous. Don’t you love her already?
Daphne
I had a picnic with Daphne every Monday and Friday of last semester. Our ritual was to meet at one o’clock in front of our city’s courthouse, walk two blocks to the park, and share a meal. In inclement weather, my living room floor was our park. After eating, we conversed, lay in the sun, and cracked a variety of inside jokes: pirate jokes, kid history jokes, jokes about Landon, and jokes about our past. She knows how to laugh, and how to see possibility in every face and crevice of the world. In a couple days she’s going to Mongolia for 18 months. I will miss her absolutely. In writing this impossibly short paragraph about Daphne, I’ve had to alter my tense from present, “our ritual is…” to past “our ritual was…” Tonight she sat on my couch with me, we poured our souls into each others hands, and drank ginger ale. As she walked out my door and said, “see you Sunday” I fell into a moment of melancholy, maybe I shed a tear, because I know soon she’ll say ,”see you june of 2013.” Every moment spent with Daphne is a picnic.
Winnie
Winnie and I share blood, yes, she’s my sister. Nobody gets my jokes like Winnie does. It’s kind of silly to write about her, she’s absolutely impossible to describe. I tried once, long ago. I wrote a rhyming poem about her feet. Today it can be found in volume 5 of my life story, which resides a purple bin in our scary garage.
Abellina
Abellina is a champion and that’s a proven fact, but that’s not why we’re friends. The first week I knew her, she helped me move all my possessions. She didn’t know much about me, hardly anything really, but she did it anyway. At the most confusing, ridiculous, overwhelming, and terrifying time of my life she just helped me because she could. Nowadays she washes her laundry at my house. I love it. Together, we make happy surprises for people, have deep conversations in her car, and cook delicious foods.
Dictionary Definition! Champion: 1. One that is clearly superior or has the attributes of a winner: a champion at teaching. 2. An ardent defender or supporter of a cause or another person: a champion of the homeless. 3. One who fights; a warrior.
This may have to turn into a series.
It’s wild the way people become friends. The way we come to know, then build and carry each other. The other day someone asked me to write down 10 alive people I’m grateful for. I laughed, how could I possibly begin to narrow it down? To some degree I even have to be grateful for the people I don’t like because I always learn such startling lessons from them. Then, having gained so much from knowing them, it’s almost impossible to really dislike them. People are so marvelously interesting and confusing. Sometimes I wish I could take a class called, “the anthropology of friendship,” but when I think about it, I already am.
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