At this age, BFF takes on a whole new meaning

Friends.

One word. Deceptively simple. Filled with emotion, history and the future.

With adjectives, the word’s simplicity evolves to describe very complicated relationships. A story in just one or two words.

Best friends. Forever.

Girlfriends. Girl friends. Boyfriends.

Old friends….or as I prefer to call them, Long-time friends.

Former friends.

Friends with benefits.

Frenemies.

College friends. Work friends. High school friends. Childhood friends.

Blog friends.

These past few days, I was on a mini-vacation. With friends.

Two women whom I have known since high school and I took off for a few days together. We have met fairly regularly for lunches and dinners over the past several years. This is the first time we have traveled together. One of us has had a history of panic attacks when staying in hotels. She finally decided that she was ready to try again with all of us together in one room.

She had no problems on this trip. She is ready to do it again.

One woman is a newly retired special ed teacher. One is a youth education director at a church. The retired teacher has never married and has no children. The church lady has 5 adult children, 6 grandchildren, and a husband who is in the midstages of dementia; she went back to school and got her Bachelor’s degree at age 50.  They are amazing women. Then there is me, a lawyer with 3 adult children.

In three days, we never ran out of things to talk about. We laughed. A lot. We drank (but not as much as we’d predicted). We drove a lot-we were within 7 miles of the Canadian border.  We shopped. One of us really loved the casinos, so we visited three of them (the food is very good!).

Actually, this is not the friend who loved the casino, but she tried and won a little. And then quit.

We ate a lot.

The snack counter of our hotel room. Most of it came home with us.

High school is often a very difficult period of life. The only thing the students have in common is that they attend the same school. Most students never see their classmates after graduation unless they attend a reunion.

Some people have a lot of friends, many of whom come in and out of their lives. I have a few friends, most of whom have been in my life for a very long time. These are the kind of friends that you may not have seen for 10 years, but if you see them, it is as though it was just yesterday that you gushed with them over a boy for whom you had the biggest crush. ” I luv Joe!” can cement a lifetime friendship!

These two friends and I lost track of each other for quite a while after high school even though we lived relatively close to each other. A random meeting, the obligatory “We should do lunch sometime” which turned into a real lunch, and we have been close ever since.

The one thing that was a “must do” on my agenda was to meet a blog friend, Jono. My high school friends are not bloggers. They don’t read blogs. They really don’t know what the word “blog” means. They didn’t know that I have a blog. One of them was very worried about the idea of meeting someone I knew only online. She reluctantly came along, but I think she was secretly planning how to call 911-even though there is very little cell phone service in that area.

We visited Jono’s farm on the “mountain” above Lake Superior. His wide pastures feed Norwegian Fjord horses. The view is spectacular-green hills spotted with cream-colored horses, a horizon of blue water laid out like a table top edged with clouds. Photos do not do it justice, mine especially.

Jono’s pasture overlooking Lake Superior. He is on the right.

So now a blogging friend and my high school friends have connected.

Friends. That simple word again.

The world can be a strange and wonderful place.

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