Real Friends

I'm not someone who has a lot of friends. For one I'm too cynical, and as a rule I just don't tend to like people.

I have a few friendships that are the forever kind though. One is Mr. Bear.



He has been my friend since I was 6 months old. He smells kind of funny, has a mouth drawn on with marker and only has fur left between the top of his legs and his butt. (Most of the fur is missing as a result of a mummy phase when I covered him in that sticky paper you use to line your cabinets.) As an only child, he truly was my friend. All of my stuffed animals were. To this day I still ascribe human emotions to the stuffed animals I fall for. If someone is mean to them, it hurts my feelings that someone would hurt their feelings.

Another is my husband Chris.



Now I know a lot of people say that their spouse is their best friend, but I am lucky enough to have it be true. We were friends before we dated. Heck we weren't gonna date! I was 2 years older, divorced with 2 sons. Meanwhile Chris was unattached, and lived a fun, spur-of-the-moment life. (He doesn't any more, but that story is for another day!) Why would he tie himself down with this mess (again, another story, another day.)

No one has ever known me as well as Chris and still loved me, emotional issues and all. He is unfailing good & kind in a way I can't even imagine being. I do not, in any way, deserve him, but I thank God every day that he is with me nonetheless.

Now that brings me to Kim...



(Kim who is gonna be mad that her pic is on my blog!) Kim and I are friends in a way that I haven't had before, or since. We met as desk clerks at a hotel & spent boring evenings doing cross-stitch, eating Big Boy & Baskin Robbins & occasionally splitting a pack of Pixie Stix until we were both so sugar high we couldn't stop laughing long enough to check in the guests. (When this happened Kim usually checked in the guest because she has more self control than I do.)

Kim & I are are nothing alike, yet exactly the same. We see the best in each other while neither of us thinks much of ourselves. She saw me through some of the worst times of my life, she knows that I can be selfish & self-serving, but she still loves me.

Kim and her wonderfully perfect daughter Kate made the jump that most of us here in Michigan would like to make and moved to a beautiful place where the pace is slow and Mother Nature lets you in on her most glorious acheivements. A place that I would live in a heartbeat. I've only seen Kim once in about 10 years, but I know that I can call her & she will understand exactly what I'm trying to say. She is the kind of friend who even after all this time apart reads a book, knows that the details of it will speak to me and sends it off to me. This is the once in a lifetime kind of friend that means the world to me.

This is a friend who I love much & miss more.