Dear Mom may our friends never change

Dear Mom may our friends never change

I had a reunion this weekend. To say it was great to see everyone would be a dramatic understatement.

One of the reasons I always make it to the Phi Theta Kappa National Convention every year, yea I know it is an International convention but it was a National convention when I started going, is to see people I only see once a year. We catch up, we have a few drinks, we talk about what is going on now, good and bad, and we talk about the way we were. I have watched so many of my friends go through good and bad times it is a real source of strength when things get bad in my life. I have but to remember a conversation with someone I know made it through and it is almost like they are standing beside me now.

A phone call or an email just to say hi strengthens the moment and I suddenly have renewed vigor.

So much changes. Hair length, belt length, but there is this feeling when you meet you just said goodbye yesterday. It is uncanny how you can sit down and it seems like you were just talking the night before and you are thinking how did they lose 30 lbs overnight? I gotta get that diet.

One minute we are sitting around talking about our latest love and the next we are comparing notes on what songs we sing to our kids at bedtime. Years apart chronologically, moments apart psychologically.

Perhaps we have a sense of urgency that allows us to drop the formalities and throw ourselves straight into our longtime friend mode. After all we only have the weekend and we have to fit in as much as we can before Sunday arrives. The threat we will be hugging goodbye in only hours allows us to find that feeling we have always shared and cling to it.

I have no idea how often you could get together for such a feeling. I suspect there are some serious diminishing returns associated with frequent use. But you can’t help but think how fun it would be to do this every weekend. And really in your head that is what it is. A years worth of weekends strung together in your head yet separated by years. Everyone changing with every visit yet staying the same. Just as you remember them.


To a friend

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
that always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,

Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone

We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
and heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Amy Lowell

Love Mike