The Girl Scouts nailed it on the head.
I learned a deeply profound song back in the 5th grade. During my short-lived, one year career as a Scout.
As music often does, a Girl Scout song my mom taught me in my youth, still comes back to me when my heart is filled with love for one of my old friends.
We learned a song about friendship.
“Make new friends, but keep the old
One is silver and the other gold.
A gorgeous view from Caledonia, Wisconsin. Sent to me by one of my oldest and dearest friends.
A text from my Gold friend.
“I took Bella for a walk yesterday and this view made me think of you.”
That was it. A photo and one sentence.
But that one photo, and one that one sentence were rich with meaning. Rich with almost two decades of history we have together.
The photo told me that she STILL knows what I love. The sentence told me she knows, that I STILL know, what SHE loves.
Seven years, and seven states apart. She still knows me, and still cares.
In the midst of a particularly hard season of life this fall, that one photo and that one sentence lifted my spirits and carried me along for days.
My friend is not old — she is Gold.
Just like me, we are still spring chickens in our early ’30s. (At least in our middle-aged minds.)
And just like a few other special women I have known for my entire adult life, this friend is Gold.
Lucky for me that SHE didn’t stop calling me when I moved away. Lucky for me that she invested time pursuing a person whose proximity to her full, busy life now made this friendship less than convenient.
This is A Golden Lesson about friendship I am slowly learning from her. A lesson I want to pass on.
Even though our visits are too few and too far between, when I meet up again with any of my Gold Friends, it is as though no time as has passed at all.
THAT is Gold.
Thank you Gold Friends; thank you Girl Scouts; thank you Mom. For so many life lessons learned, and shared.
And thank you Silver Friends too — for the possibility of a Golden Friendship as we pass the years, and tears, Together.