Friendship

One thing our constant relocations have taught me is the value of friendship. When we lived in Austin, honestly, I took friends for granted. They were everywhere! We knew almost everyone at church, we never sat in a pew alone, at school, Chase had good friends as well as acquaintances to hang out with on the weekends, and we just were blessed with good people around us.

When you move, you don't have that luxury. Everyone is a new friend. No one here knows that I have bug dreams (or what they are even if I tell them), and certainly no one has experienced them with me at a conference somewhere! No one here knows that we are Packer fans, or why. No one here knows that I used to watch the snow plows with fascination from my living room window or that I am chronically early for everything. Every story, every personality quirk, every preference is new and requires explanation. Not necessarily a bad thing, but kind of a lonely thing.

I am certainly not discounting the long-distance relationships I have maintained. In Austin, in Green Bay, in Denver, I have wonderful friends who love me and have continued to live my life with me, even after I have constantly relocated again. And I know that in a year, I will have wonderful friends here about whom I can say the same. I just don't right now. I have made friends with a woman from karate, who has loaned me her two boys for the afternoon today. Her name is Danielle, and we have a lot in common. I enjoy her company a lot, and we have even started trading books, as we are both readers. So, my whining will eventually come to an end, I know, when more time has passed and more friends have been made.

It's just funny that before I became a gypsy, I would have said I only had a few close friends, and not a big group of them. As I think of it, the word friend has many meanings. Some friends, I only saw at book club or sat next to at church sometimes. Some friends, I only saw a couple of times a year for a birthday celebration or an occasional lunch. Some friends I saw nearly every day when our kids played "Annie I Over" in the neighborhood or to have dinner together. All of my friends have made an impact on my life and I cherish those memories. I truly hope we live here long enough to have those kinds of friendships again.