Rekindling old friendships

When I was younger, I made my best friend laugh so hard that she threw up at our friend's birthday party. She ended up being sent home because everyone thought she was sick. Oh, all the trouble we used to get into. She played the straight man to my slapstick humor and we made a fabulous pair. As we got older, we learned a great deal from each other. I was more outgoing and she was more studious. She was definitely one of my friends who my mom considered a good influence on me.

 
Sadly, we drifted apart after she graduated from high school a year early, and we lost touch for a while. I went off to college and often wondered about my friend. Was she happy? Had she found love? I ended up graduating and getting married before we had a chance to meet up.
 
 
She was about six months pregnant and I was a bubbly, naive newlywed. I was so nervous and excited to meet her for lunch. I kept thinking about the little girl who loved musicals as much as I did and hoping we would still have something in common. I saw her with the cutest baby bump in the world and gave her a hug. Her blue eyes were still shimmering, full of hope, love and a little bit of mischief. Though we were no longer two stick-thin girls who giggled uncontrollably and loved Garfield SpaghettiOs, we found something even better. We had known each other a lifetime ago, so it was kind of like meeting someone for the first time but knowing their background story very well. We felt comfortable, nostalgic yet completely new.
 
I'm honored to say she is one of my closest friends ... again. She was my on-call person during my labor and even coached me on how to nurse my baby girl those first few days of motherhood.
 
As we grow older and move from single to married to parenthood, it seems like some friends were destined to be for a certain season of life. Some drifted away after college, some joined after we got married and my husband's friends became close to me as well, and some have only recently touched my life during and after pregnancy. Most of us start out with many friends, our gradeschool classmates and neighbors, but it seems like the older you get the fewer friends you have and the more valuable they become. If you have a handful of people in your life you truly call friends, you are richly blessed.
 
And of course, to get a friend, you have to be a friend. I've been so lucky to have been shown what a good friend is and I try my best to show that love in return. One of life's simple joys is being yourself around a friend, just letting your hair down, not always being "politically correct" and knowing they will still like you. Even if you make them laugh so hard that they lose their SpaghettiOs.