Old Friends

"Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose." Tennessee Williams

Today I am feeling especially grateful for old friends. One of my bestest from high school, Gretchen, is in the area this weekend visiting her parents, and so we got to go to lunch today and then to tool around the book store. It was wonderful. It is amazing to have friends who, no matter how much time between visits or how different your lives are, you can get together with and just fall back into a familiar pattern as though no time has passed. It never feels awkward or stilted, just normal and fun. It is one advantage to living in the same area you grew up in - everyone's parents still live here, so even if my friends move away, they always come back to visit. I love them so much, and love seeing them.

Gretchen graduated a year before me, and has lived in the L.A. area ever since. She does wardrobe for the show 24, but doesn't think a thing of it. She has worked on many shows and met many stars, but she never talks about it unless I ask, and even when she does talk about it, she is so not taken in by the glamour of Hollywood. They are just people she sees at work, some of them are jerks, and some of them are not.

When I lived in Utah, Jon sent an email out to a bunch of old friends from high school a bit before my birthday, asking anyone who could to come out and surprise me for my birthday as I had been kind of lonely. Gretchen answered the call, and the day before my birthday she knocked on my door. How many people pay to fly out to surprise you just because your husband asks them to? Gretchen is one of a kind, to be sure, and I am so grateful to have her as a friend.