Lifelong

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We had a mini reunion.  Erin and Rachel (and Rachel's family.  Unfortunately, Erin's family wasn't there and I would have liked to have seen Brian again and meet her children.)  They are some of my oldest friends.  They're in that small group that I would call lifelong friends.  I hadn't seen Rachel for several years and I hadn't seen Erin for about 15 years and it didn't matter one little bit.  We could have talked all night.

We met when we were Braeden's age!  That's hard for me to wrap my mind around.

We looked at pictures from our freshman year at BYU.  Some of us would remember something that the others may or may not remember.  None of us remembered the name of the Multi Media Man who was admired from afar when he brought the video projector into our History of Civilization class we all took together and then Rachel ended up dating him.  And we couldn't think of his name.

not sure what I'm doing here...readying my necklace for a picture?

We laughed a lot.  We caught up on each others' families.  It was just wonderful.

I don't know if it's because we were such close friends at a pivotal time in our lives, when we were far from home or if it's because we have lived sort of parallel lives, but I am connected to them. The things that matter most to each of us matter most to all of us.

We have Big Things in common.  We want the same things.  I think if we all lived next door to each other, our children would be great friends, our husbands would chat around the BBQ (like Adam and Rachel's husband Nate did last night) and Erin and Rachel and I would never run out of things to talk about.

When everyone left, Adam said to our kids, "See?  That's why your mom wants you to go to BYU so much."

And it is completely true.  The friends I made at BYU are a gift in my life.  (And then there's the husband I met at BYU...he's pretty key to my happiness too.)