Love Letter to Old Friends

We have been living in Williamsburg for just over a year now.  Our anniversary of moving into our house is coming up the first week in April.  So we have been very focused on making a new life here - meeting other parents, forging new friendships, and frankly just trying to keep our heads above water.  But this weekend was a chance for us to connect with some old friends that we haven't seen in a while. We traveled to Lynchburg to see my oldest friend Laura and to attend my friend Jamie's daughter's third birthday party.  I've known these women since childhood.  I started playing with Laura when I was still in diapers, and I met Jamie in high school, when we thought that we were adults, but in hindsight, were very much still children.  How sweet it is to see them raise their own children, and even better to watch our children play together.  I loved looking out Jamie's window to see Sophie and Jamie's daughter sitting together in a cluster of daffodils, plucking flowers to add to the brilliant yellow bouquets in their little fists.  I loved watching Sophie chase Laura's middle two girls around the house, giggling.  I only wish that our families could spend more time together, so that Sophie could feel the immediate ease with the other children that I feel with their mothers.  

There is never much time to talk uninterrupted. Children bustle around, calling on one mom's attention, then the other's, so the conversation stays superficial.  But the comfort and understanding that's been built over decades of friendship envelops us the whole time we're together.  There's nothing like that feeling of not needing to explain yourself, of knowing that you have both been put together from so many of the same memories and experiences.  Well, maybe there is something like it - the feeling of belonging to a family.  As an only child, I am truly lucky to have been able to expand my wonderful family to include these women.  I love you two!  Let's have another superficial, fragmented, and absolutely perfect conversation soon.