Make New Friends but Keep the Old

I, the introvert, have had a very social summer. I've been chumming with my sister and my mom. . .
then last week was the MacPhail Suzuki Institute and it was super cool to be around piano teacher friends all week.

Casey and Stacey from childhood Eldridge were here in Minnesota this weekend for a girls retreat. We did girl things like exercise class and pedicures. One of those times where you switch from coffee to wine as the day chats away. Well. . . I had coffee.

Mary Ray went to her first weekend away at church camp with Amelia. Two against the world. Funny how one good friend can give you so much courage. Keep you brave.

The letter came in the mail Saturday while she was gone. You know. . . the one about what teacher you get for school. The calls started pouring in. By 5:00 I knew who every nine-year-old girl in Eagan had. I knew the cold hard truth. Still, when she got home Sunday I let Mary make her own discoveries. Call by call I heard the dialog and the silence. I was putting things away when I walked by her room and saw the despair and heard the quiet sobs.

No one.

No friend in the class. She got the teacher she loves--but no friends.

It would have only taken one. One can keep you brave.

Since it had been about an hour since I dropped Casey at the airport I too was feeling a little friendless. I thought of every goodbye and every lost opportunity. Every lonely moment.

And then I told Mary--about how Casey had moved away when I was little and how sad and lonely I was. How no friendship would ever be the same. Sixth grade was a tough time to leave. Jeepers I can still cry over it.

I thought things would never be the same.

Yet. . . here we are, forty years after that first grade bus ride. Things are still the same.

Now I'm thinking about all the friends in between and all the roles our friends play. Faith friends. Piano friends. Garden friends. Love each other's kids friends. Been through one specific crappy time together friends.

Sometimes one friend can keep you brave.

Sometimes one friend shows up when you have no brave left.

Last night we had a bon voyage party for my student Isabella and her folks. Mother Lorie is my friend. A new friend. A stay till the end of every volunteer job friend. An inspire you with her resilience and southern class friend. An always wearing lipstick no matter how crazy things get friend. They are moving to South Africa for awhile and then coming back. I'll miss her at the Deerwood bus stop. I'm sure she will take on the volunteer tasks of wherever she lands. She will get her lipstick through customs with her mother and the dog and Isabella's world and keep her manners along the way. Good manners can go a long way. All the way to South Africa. Grow where you are planted, Lorie. You are so brave.

And Mary will grow where she is planted in the fourth grade class. And just like my mom drove me to Burlington all those years to see Casey, and just like her family paid for plane tickets from Texas summer after summer when they moved even farther--I will do what I need to do to help Mary keep her loyal friends.

Make new friends, and keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.
Actually, I think they are all gold. And one at a time they keep us brave.