Love My Friends

I love my friends well. I love them with all my heart. If they will allow me my imperfections, my lapses into total self-absorption and sometimes even my utter cluelessness, they find that there are some things I can offer. I may not be there every day. I may not be there for big things but you know what I’m there for almost always? The little things. The hidden things. After the birthdays, weddings, graduations, deaths and births, I am there to listen to what they were really thinking or feeling while they were smiling for all the pictures. I’m there to hear them out. When they are joyous beyond compare and they feel no one can feel that with them, I’m there and I shed tears of joy with them and jump up and down. Because I really feel that with them, not because I pretend. When they are devastated and crying on the floor, I will get down there with them and cry too while I hold them, because I know that feeling and I want to get them through it. I love my friends. I may not be there to paint the walls or move the furniture or get the car out of the ditch – that’s another friend. But I’m there when they need somewhere to go with them where even they don’t want to go. As I write this I realize it is a shame I can’t do that for my family. They want me there for the birthdays and the weddings. I've made most of them, but missed several. If I’m not there for those they think I do not care. But they’re very wrong. I won’t try to explain it to them. It’s too bad.