Movement

I've been drinking in the smell of summer rain tonight. It's one of my very favorite smells. I could hardly make myself move off the steps in my back yard, but the rain finally drove my inside after I took several long, soulful breaths. Tonight the rain smells like tears and my heart is crying even if my eyes haven't yet. My friend Teresa is moving to Georgia tomorrow and I have been bottling up the emotion of it for weeks. I've known in my mind that she was going for quite a while. We've been on the "last time" lookout for months, but it always seemed so far away. All along I've been sure that at the last minute something would happen and she and her husband would end up staying. I'm very good at denial.

But today the movers started marching their things out of their house and tonight as we sat on her patio drinking wine and watching the lights twinkle over Utah Lake I finally understood that she was leaving. I wondered out loud if I would eventually know the people who move into her house when she leaves, but I can't imagine that I would want to. The place that has been such a peaceful and welcoming retreat for me over the last year really has nothing to do with that house and I can't imagine seeing it without her there.

Sometime soon I will write about Teresa and what her sparkling friendship means to me. Tonight I'm standing in a puddle and trying not to get my heart too wet.

My Friendship Chain

I mark my life with my friends. Some people have scrapbooks filled with memories of their life, but my memories are almost all wrapped firmly around my friends. I collect them. Like a trail along my life, I mark every twist and turn in my path with the people I picked up along the way. And my life has had more twists and turns than the Snake River. From every wildly divergent, hair-brained experiment in rediscovery, I have a friend or two who keep walking along this meandering journey with me. Whenever I feel alone I just have to count back.

It started on the first day of first grade. I picked up my first very best, sleepover and giggling friend on that day. I have dragged her along with me through junior high, high school, living together in college and beyond. My life wouldn't be my life without her. When she and her little boy got in a terrible crash last year I thought about just how empty the world would be if she weren't in it.

From there I just kept adding to my collection. My first college roommate, the Statesman people, my mission buddies, the China crew, my world trip partners, the Habitours, the Covey crowd, the law school trio, the WOWs, my chakra sisters, the cycle chicks and Provo people, the daiquiri darlings, the book-club beauties, the boy brokers, the bunko babes and most recently my SunCrest soul mates.

This has been a stellar friend year. My mates on the mountain have already changed me and now my life just wouldn't be my life without them either. Lucky me.