"Yes'm old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of."
Sarah Orne Jewett
The special journey has taught me of the value of friends.
It has been an interesting observation over the course of becoming special.
Some friends have dropped out of my life, obviously uncomfortable with my new special world.
Some friends put themselves at a safe arms length, perhaps the distance created to not be close enough to involve themselves in the specialness, but close enough to watch. They may not realize the obviousness of their position. Ask anyone in the special club - it is a known fact of life for us and we all share this all-too-common friendship phenomenon. It is quite obvious to us.
A few handful of friends, the "for better or worse" loyal kind have stuck by my side and jumped in with both feet. They have accepted the changed me, supported me as I teeter across the fine line of trying to be a friend while fighting circumstances that suck every ounce of my time and energy to be such. They will never know how many prayers I have said expressing gratitude for them.
The last category, is a rare gem. They are the friends that only knew me as special, they saw my life, the crazy unbalanced complicated taxing life that it is, and they jumped in to be a part. They never knew the fun person that I used to be. They only know me as the one with the permanent worry wrinkle fixed between my brows. They took me as I am and called me friend. They have helped and supported me, laughed and cried with me.
I love my old friends and have clung to them as I would my last breath. But I have been so grateful to catch a few new ones that are fit to make an old one out of.
One such friend is Danielle.
And she just happened to have a birthday that ends in a big fat 0 this past weekend.
Not one to let a reason for some serious celebration pass me by, I kidnapped her and took off to celebrate accordingly.
I dubbed our getaway - Our Favorite Things.
She hates surprises. I told her tough beans. With a getaway title such as that, how can you be nervous?
Before you get too excited about what the rest of the post will entail, let me preface by saying that we are two very worn out moms with 9 kids between us. It takes very little to make a celebration for us - heck, folding a load of laundry when you don't find a tube of strawberry Chapstick melted every where is a celebration. A kid making it to the toilet to vomit is a celebration. Finding matches for 80% of the sock pile is a huge celebration, as is when the child you are holding sneezes at point blank while he is eating Ritz crackers and you manage to turn your head just in time. Simple pleasures - remember?
With that said, Our Favorite Things began with a movie about her favorite subject - running, and we viewed it in my favorite theater with the amazing reclining theater seats that put me to sleep every time. (Seen McFarland USA yet? Highly recommend. Very uplifting.) We followed that with another Favorite Thing for her, healthy eating, and enjoyed the yummiest salad ever. We each share the Favorite Thing of home organization, so Container Store was next on the list of favs and we browsed for a bit before we headed over to my favoritest of favorites - a massage. Danielle's most favorite thing that I have come to know of is ice cream. So after our massages we went over for some Ben and Jerry's where I had another one of her favorite things waiting for her - her sister from Maryland. After our ice cream we headed over to a local hotel for the night (what mom doesn't have a favorite thing of a good night sleep?!) and perused a stack of fresh mindless women's magazines. We slept in (for us that means 7:00am) and passed up on the rest of the list of favorites for the morning and enjoyed a leisure morning hanging out in our pj's on our hotel cozy beds for 4 hours. Oh, the bliss of getting to just be still sometimes. We enjoyed ourselves a fluffy omelet for breakfast and returned to our most Favorite Things, our families.
My friend Danielle, she is one of my favorite things too. She is amazing. She is doing what is most important, and doing it wonderfully well. I hope she knows that.
Happy 40th Friend!
Oh, did I just type your age on my blog for all to see. Shoot, sorry about that.