friends

It's been 10 days since I last wrote. Way too long as my friends assured me this weekend. I know I'd be slightly annoyed if someone whose blog I read didn't update their page for 10 days, so although I'm not feeling particularly inspired on any one topic this morning, I'm forcing myself into spending a few momemts being thoughtful and productive.

I'm actually supposed to be at work today but I'm sick and when I keep talking all day long like I did most of this weekend I have lovely fits of coughing. That sort of behavior does not mesh well with restaurant managing, and it turned out to be ok for me to take a sick day. So I slept in. I finally got up, did a bit of reading, showered and now it's off to update my wedding celebration registry and finish my invitations. I've been thinking last night and this morning about my great weekend picking up relationships with friends whom I haven't seen in far too long.

We went to college together and for many years saw each other many times a week or every day as roommates; now it's been months, nearing a year since we've been together. People say that after turning 24 or 25 life starts to speed by, and that's totally how I feel. I don't know how I have managed to go so many months without seeing these friends. I'm amazed that it doesn't seem nearly that long, although so much has changed, especially in my life.

The most wonderful discovery of the weekend is that there are still remains of an undisturbed bond beneath what has been on my end a distant, reserved, apathy toward keeping up some of my old friendships. It was not intentional, just a time of adjustment and processing where I didn't feel able to explain my behavior, my thoughts, my faith, my feelings, except that I was going somewhere and I hoped we could all meet again some day.

My friend Erin said to me as we cruised south toward Chicago that it's interesting how we are all in different places doing different things with different people and somehow seem to all be tracking. "Tracking" is an interesting word, like we might be taking different routes now although we were once taking the same train to the same place. But we're still headed to the same destination, wherever that might be, just with different stops along the way. Like our trains or cars are going the same distance, parallel to one another, although the loops and turns of the route take different ways to head that way. What I mean is, the bond of amazing times and friendship and love doesn't have to be broken by circumstance and change. It's still there, hiding beneath whatever hurt and distress has happened, but it's still there, like waters waiting to be tested once again.