Best Friends Forever! Kind Of.

It's a strange flux I find myself in right now. I can feel the stage being set for some sort of change or shift in the dynamic of my friendships. Reunions, new friendships, friendships headed for time-outs. My kids seem to be in the same state of flux:  battling with greed, jealousy, loneliness, and an over-saturation of texts, tweets and Facetime. To name a few. Who's been added? Friended? Favorited? Liked, winked, LOL'd at? Or worse, Deleted.

 Oh Social Media, what a tangled world-wide-web you weave. 

Two of my favorite friends have moved away in as many months. Life goes on. Marriages, do-overs, jobs. Sometimes to live the dream you gotta chase the dream. I get it. But still. I have a deficit of cool friends anymore, and I can't afford for them to just be moving away; especially at the same time. I find that as I get older, my friendships become more important to me. They mean more, they are deeper. I find that they are moving away from me. 

 "Is there something on your mind you want to talk about?" I asked my son as I tucked his covers snugly around him at bedtime.

 "Yeah..." He closed his eyes softly, and although I'm sure it wasn't meant for me to see, a tiny tear popped out. 

"What's wrong little sweet?"

"Well, me and Will are fighting." A second tear chased the first and I wiped them both away with my thumb and the corner of the sheet. 

"That's sad, what are you fighting about?"

 He emoted at length about the injustice of it all. The unfairness, the disregard, the neglect of common courtesy. 

"It's football, it's playing fair. It's talking to other friends or kids who don't like me, it's being ignored like I'm not even there. It's everything." 

Ah, yes. The everything. 

I coached him with flawless advice about how to approach Will, how to confront him with kindness and an open mind and heart. I advised him on being a good friend, even when its hard and when it hurts. 

"Give Will the opportunity to do better. Talk to him. A good friend will give you a chance to correct and adjust. Let him know what the perception of him is when he cheats. If he responds with poor choices and decisions and isn't a respectable person, we will go from there. Ok?"

He nodded, jostling another tear out of its home. There was no mucous, and the corner of the sheet wasn't too damp so I figured I had done an acceptable job of neutralizing the situation. At least for the next 8 hours of night-night. 

Today I made contact with a friend I've been out of touch with for about twenty years. I hate to admit that I am old enough to have a friend from twenty years ago--but it is what it is.  She sounded the same, but everything has changed. Marriages, divorces, kids, moves. Wins, losses. So much has happened over those twenty years, yet in the span of a 45 minute phone call, it was as if nothing had changed. Time stood still for us. A flood of memories came back to me the rest of the day. Smiles crept across my face, sighs. Giggles. Stories I told my husband about my journey with my friend all ended in, "I guess you had to be there."

 James Taylor said it best when he sang, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time..." Amen. My friends have moved unrealistic distances away to meet for coffee, Pho, shopping. But I enjoyed the time that our paths crossed and we walked together. My hope is that Will and Jack have one of those magical friendships that can make time stand still. I hope that by November, they won't even remember the fight they had in October.  And when they laugh and tell the stories twenty years later, they will all end with,  "Guess you had to be there."