Well, here I am with more road behind me than I see in front and those words echo in my mind. Mother has been gone for too many years now and I find myself more often thinking like she talked. So, I got to thinking about how many friends I have actually had and are they still around. For the first eight years of school I had a very best friend. Her name was Barbara and I spent one night a week at her house. Never saw her after grade school.
High school is a blur. Then I married and moved around a lot so friends were hard to come by. After the divorce I moved back home to Hutch. There I became best friends with a waitress named Vi. She had a daughter the same age as my son. That one stuck through thick and thin and still exists to this very day. She is a better friend then I am. She writes, I read. She calls, I talk. I moved to Colorado and she moved to Missouri. We have both buried our husbands. I got to go see that girl this spring!
The next lasting friend I made was Frank. We were in business with him and I liked his honesty and all his family. He is still in business and lives in this town and I have not seen him for several years, but I still count him as friend. If I called he would be here in a flash and vice versa.
Then came Renate. Renate listens when I talk and I listen to her. She is bluntly honest with me when I am wrong. She and I use each other as sounding boards. We both work with AIDS clients so we have that to commiserate over; that and attending funerals together.
Then along came Kay, who winters in Texas, but we keep in touch and have breakfast every Wednesday when she is here. We have in depth conversations and do a lot of gossiping.
So you see there is four friends, each perched on a finger. I only have room for one more! You know, either my mother was wrong or I am blessed beyond measure because I have a lot of people that I consider very dear friends. Back home is Evelyn and Kay, Karen, and my sisters. Shirley in Kansas City. Amy in Florida. My dear friend Jade. And all my Internet friends and that is before I start naming the ones here in Pueblo. I am not even going to go there because someone will get their feelings hurt.
I have friends who have become lovers and lovers who have become friends. (I like the latter better.) I am truly blessed in that I can walk into any place in this town and there is someone I know who is very happy to see me, so I am not alone long. More often than not their name escapes me, but they don't seem to mind. This impresses me. Most people want their name remembered, but my friends do not care. They love me for who I am, not if I remember their name.
I have few rules that my friends must adhere to and failure to do so gets you off my list of friends and you then become a "this is". So watch out for that one. If you are still with me here you are my friend, or my dear friend, or my very dear friend.
The first rule of friendship is to always be honest. I gave up lying because I could not keep my stories straight. So honesty is paramount. The truth is what it is and should never be altered. I respect the truth. Lie even once and we are done. The omission of a relevant fact is also a lie or at least it is in my book. You are my friend because I judged you by your words and actions from the first day I met you. If you neglected to mention that you are a serial killer in your spare time, don't you think I would want to know that?
I am loyal to my friends and I expect loyalty in return. If you have something bad to say to me, say it to me, not someone else. We can work out our differences if we know what they are and we face them head on. Love has to come naturally, but a friendship is worth working to save.
You must respect that I am a Bleeding Heart Liberal. You do not have to like it when I work with the AIDS clients, or the battered women, or the illegal immigrants, or pile my car with recyclable crap, or stop and give that homeless woman the money in my pocket, or stand nose to nose with a homophobe in the middle of the library and we get thrown out. You don't have to like it but you do have to accept it and if my actions embarrass you are free to just walk away. Just do not attempt stop me or try to correct me. I am on a roll! You are free to voice your opinions and I will respect them, but they are yours and part of your conservatism. It is best we not discuss politics. LOL
For the most part I try to adhere to the 10 Commandments and so do my friends. It is nothing we think about, just sort of comes naturally. So once more I have digressed from the point of this blog entry. I came on here to decide who to put on that last finger to fill out my friend list and discovered that I am going to need a lot more fingers! I love every body and they love me. It is called making the world go round. I can not limit my friends, nor would my dear mother expect me to. So I will just hang on to what I have when the road comes to an end, I will just look back and see who all is still there!
