Old Friends

Ella Fitzgerald is crooning the Jailhouse Blues while I sit at my desk, looking out the window and seeing the most beautiful blue sky and the autumn leaves clinging to the trees in the wind. It is a glorious day. I received a text this morning from my oldest daughter telling me so. She is right.

I got an eight page autobiography today from an old friend. We've recently connected again and I have read and reread this personal account of his life about four times now. I learn something new each time I read it. I think back to when we knew one another and how we went our separate ways and wonder at the universe and what we can afford to one another at this time in our lives. He seems to have done SO MUCH in his life. I can sum up the 90's for myself in one sentence. I attached my life to someone when I was 19 and it is his course that I have followed. Someone who had lived a lifetime already by the time I came along. But these are old feelings I have already put to bed...I can say them and not feel the angst I did five years ago.

I'm at a point in my life where I am consciously surrounding myself with people I actually want to be in my life. This is not something that was important to me in my 20's and even well into my 30's. It is important to me now. I want people who encourage me to be better, bigger, more than; just by being these things themselves. I want to be with people who are always learning and from whom I can learn.

My old friend fits this bill. I remember the quirky kid he was and even then I knew he made my world bigger. I am sorry for not being able to appreciate him more as my teenager self.