Close and Few          

Although I play music and perform from time to time with a small group and although I am in sales as a profession that commands that I can stand and take the position at the front of the room to make a presentation to relative strangers, I am a fairly quiet and fairly reserved woman. 

I never sought big social sororities and I’m not much on large parties.  Through high school and until about the age of 30, my boyfriends were mostly jazz and rock and roll musicians and that meant many a late night in crowded clubs or venues.  Done that…been there.  I like intimate conversations and a glass of wine, small dinners out or at home.  Preferred music venues are small rooms versus the crowded and loud clubs of my youth.

My friends have always been close and few.  In truth, the  “youngest” friend I have I began working with in 1986. A few years later, we had moved on from that company, but we talk often, we never miss a birthday present, and we occasionally, rarely get lucky enough to carve out time to take a weekend together especially now that her only child is out of college.  He’s not yet married and she hasn’t acquired grandmother duties like most of the rest.   All of my other dear friends I have known longer than her.  I can tell you what went on in their lives recently, their birthdays, their phone numbers are still in my head from having to actually dial the number to reach them (pre iPhone Contacts list).

That phone number thing (and also physical addresses---including zip codes off the top of my head for any of them) is important to understand.  Since I met most of them in the small town I grew up in many years ago, the phone and letters and cards were important----because we all scattered.  We scattered for jobs, for love, for salvation.  If someone is important to you, distance is just a mild annoyance.  They don’t disappear from your life.  Moments with them are precious and cherished.  And I don’t look for others to take their place.

There are lovely women that I work with that I count as social friends.  We meet every few weeks for lunch or breakfast, we text and talk weekly, but I would never call them late at night to share a personal loss or heartbreak.  My friends are the women that have known my family, my challenges, my life, and me as I have known theirs.  We know so many things about each other. We still love each other over forty years later.

I know that I could call on any of them in a moment of need.  And have.  They know the same, and do.

There’s a saying that “Men may come and men may go, but girlfriends last forever”.

Yes, real girlfriends that not only passed you that note in junior high, made you a bridesmaid, cried on your shoulder when he left them, gathered around when one of us was struck down with cancer, and rejoiced in your every happiness as you did theirs. 

Time on task is a beautiful thing.  Trust in another human that has seen your scars and loves you still is not made for the masses.  It’s for those that are close and few.