Friends

When I was quite young my older sister set out to write a list of everyone she knew. I remember she was using a green notepad and I was impressed by the number of people she had scrawled on her list. Nowadays people just amass friends on Facebook, not that I'm knocking Facebook as I've happily reconnected with friends from previous times and enjoy keeping in touch with them. (You know who you are, Sarah and Heather and Narelle and...
When we married we moved from our childhood city when we and have lived in 5 different places in the 44 years since. My other sister still meets with friends from kindy days nearly 70 years ago. Now I didn't go to kindy but I don't have friends from either primary or high school days either. When you move it seems hard to keep in touch. Christmas cards or letters continue for a while and maybe birthday cards and phone calls but eventually things fade. Over the years there have been a few who refused to give up. When we moved 11 years ago I was reluctant to leave the city where  I  thought we'd returned for good. Dear friend Pam - a work colleague and church friend - not only visited us on the first weekend but rang regularly and we caught up often. I still miss her after her death from cancer 5 years ago.
Other friends fade into the background but always remain a  part of you life story. Today on our travels we visited Laurie. She and Max lived in Laura for a number of years while we were there and had the gallery and craft shop just across the road from us. They quickly became friends and were particularly important to our youngest daughter. In fact when we were to move, she announced that she would stay and live with Laurie and Max. We walked their dogs at times, admired their artwork, which often resulted in being given pieces of it and we still have the native orchids Max gave us.
When Max died Laurie returned to New South Wales to live and in the last 20 years or so we have seen her just a handful of times with only intermittent communication. But today's travels were  to take us within cooee of her place so we rang a few weeks back to say so.
Yesterday was Laurie' s birthday and today she hosted us for lunch - a pleasant meal where time stood still as we caught up, admired old familiar paintings on the wall and talked of days gone by. Friends.
So blessed.