HELD

To all of the friends who imitate Christ’s friendship to us…

I sat on the couch in her living room while our newborn babies rested and cooed in their swings and our two-year olds played somewhere else in the house, up to no good.  I can still, 8 years later, put myself back in that place, in her living room with the stone fireplace where my older son had cracked his head open at his best friend’s birthday party and where I had sat many times before trying to have a conversation amidst the sound of chaotic toddlers.  I was sitting there with one leg pulled under me, sipping coffee and stumbling over my words as I told her that we were leaving, that we were moving away.  I struggled to be vulnerable and tell her all that she had meant to me, how she had been the one to meet me  in my loneliness and isolation as a new mother in a new place and invited me to forge a true friendship. How she never lacking for people to keep her company had made room for me.  I knew our friendship would outlive us residing in the same location, but it would be different and I feared the added space would create distance. I had already prepared myself for this goodbye, the inevitable fading away that lack of proximity and the passing of time creates.   And then I saw the tears in her eyes, the reciprocation of her feelings as strong as mine. This friend of mine who was friends to so many, who could fill all her days with coffee talks and play dates, she really saw me and she really cared.  I was her one too.