Make New Friends but Keep the Old

Sometimes a little insanity is in order. This weekend we made a manic, somewhat last minute, ridiculous visit back to my alma mater. We didn't have any extra vacation days so we did the 14 hr drive in just a weekend which was really a lot of driving but was also really (sometimes life is incomprehensible!) exactly what needed to happen. The theatre club that my close chums and I helped found was celebrating 10 years and that was enough excuse for me to step up and insist on going.

I have recently decided to make a pretty directly clear life choice about friendship and important events. Somehow I became the girl who is too far away and too busy to come to anything her old friends are doing together and I hate it. I am determined to stay connected to old chums, attend those key events (weddings, baptisms, dedications, reunions, anniversaries...etc.) and whenever I am in town, I'm going to make lunch dates.

My beloved college theatre director and instructor.

When I moved away from my home state I was elated about the idea of a clean slate. I love the idea of creating yourself and the yawning possibility that exists in new friendships. And who doesn't like the hope of undoing old reputations and forging a newer, brighter image? While all of that is delicious and inspiring and wonderful, I accidentally lost touch with lots of old friends, missed a lot of wonderful opportunities and didn't have the nerve to try to meld the old me with the new one. I'm over it.

Not that I am saying I'm fearless, I'm just saying that I have come to understand that old friends and new friends both matter for different reasons, that old me and new me are still both me and both important, that relationships and connections are the feeders and safety net for essential, healthy human life and that I want my life to be one wild, spinning, knotted, weave with threads of all colors and strengths....and that meant that I needed to go to Michigan, come hell or high water.

I came home surer than ever that I'd done the right thing. There were screeching greetings with old friends, hilarious recollections, abundant warm words, more hugs than I can count, lots of long-waited-for introductions (hello husbands!), dress-up fun with my sister Foxy, sweet niece and nephew portraits, verbose and longed-for conversation (hello immensely long drive!) and a lot of coffee... It was one of the rightest things I've done in a while and so inspiring that I can hardly wait for the next chance!

My sister is a wizard with eye make-up. Isn't that beautiful?

Poetry Friday: Leaf Verse

We are to that time of year that is hard for me to enjoy. We're past the glowing throes of autumn when the world is a blazing whirl of color and crisp days...we've had our first frost and snow and jackets are now mandatory. Now its on to hearth-fires and handicraft marathons, days when we snuggle under blankets and read stacks of storybooks and when we can't so I curse the windshield while I try to unearth it from its layers of ice with that little scratchy tool buried in the trunk of the van.

I want to be so cozy about it, I'm trying to will myself into that space by trying to enjoy even the annual destruction of the foliage.

Late Autumn Theatrical

There is a host of seasonal Post-it notes,

Flittering in our street corner maple-top.

They are pale, wasted ghosts of leaves,

Performing some great arboreal Hamlet,

Thinner than themselves, inscribed “November”

On every shuddering vein and tip.

We are at the climax now, the part where

There is a great stage-death, en masse

One million staggering, fainting falls then

Performing on the chill, even lawn

They twitch at the heels, gag and roll

Crisp into rigor mortis and compost dramatically.

Such an impressive show will doubtless

Inspire an encore and we will have the whole

Thing over again beginning with the bit about the

Hope of sap rising and the miraculous green buds

Whirling open their newborn chartreuse feathers.

Check out lots of other Poetry Friday participants and their selections here.