Whatever happened to...?
I envy people with long-standing friends.

I consider myself lucky to have friends that I've known for 20 years. But many of them have friends they've known since elementary school. I'm not even really friends with anyone I went to high school with. The one person I was really close to, my best friend Steve, died of AIDS in the 90's.

Since then the only other high school friend I've kept it touch with is my friend Maria. And it can hardly be said we have a close friendship since she hasn't lived in the US for about 20 years. She and her husband and their two gloriously international, globe-trotting children, have lived all over the world. Maria & Robert take teaching jobs and they'll stay someplace for a year or two and move on. They're rarely back in the states. Our friendship is now really my waiting for their yearly Christmas card to find out where they are this time. (The most recent card has them in Saudi Arabia. Before that it was Malaysia, and before that it was Japan.)

But I don't have anyone who "remembers when." And sometimes I miss that.

I've never been one of those people with dozens of friends. I have a lot of acquaintances, but people I consider friends; the kind of real, close friends you can call when you're sick or your life has fallen apart....of those I'm definitely in single digits. But I know how fortunate I am to have that many. And believe me, I went for quality -- not quantity. My friends are each and every one amazing, fabulous, wonderful. I love them all. And my best friend, Husband, is the most amazing of all. I just hope I'm as good a friend to them as they have always been to me.

Sometimes I can't believe how lucky I am.