on Friends

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that; one stitch at a time taken patiently, and the pattern will come out all right like embroidery. Oliver Wendell Holmes

I’m at a place, sufficiently far along, that I can see enough of the tapestry that is my life to reflect upon it. I marvel at the many colored threads that are woven together to create something of such breathtaking beauty. My years are certainly full of despair as well as joy, and with those experiences come the contrast of colors that make a more dramatic piece of work.

In my tapestry, the colors that shine most brightly, that most take my notice, are those colors of friends, family, the people I hold dear to my heart. Sometimes a thread is lost for awhile, but most often it picks up again somewhere further on, a friend thought lost, reemerges, and I am overjoyed at the reunion.

Part of the goal of this trip is to pick up those threads that are growing thin, to bolster them with time, attention, affection, to create new memories together. Now, having left California, there are others that are beginning to fade. It’s a hard part of life, but I am old enough to accept it with peace, mostly. There are many more that will abide in my life until its end: red, lime green, violet, indigo, jade, sienna, purple, fuschia, mahogany.

I am most fascinated reflecting on how friends have entered my life. I pursued some, was pursued by others, and in a few cases met someone somewhere in the middle as we each recognized something that at once seemed essential and necessary to the other. Some I met in social groups, some during earlier travels, some through fellowship in church groups and Bible studies, others as we shared the recent arduous journey of obtaining our degrees. But, whatever the means, they are now intricately part of me, and can neither be extricated nor altered.

Even now, as I meet so many new people, make new friends and acquaintances, I wonder which ones will endure, will bear the months and miles that will soon separate us. I marvel at the new colors, the remarkable shades of dark and light that enter my life, enriching my days, exponentially increasing the experience that is my life, and I hope in turn that the flecks of orange I bring to their lives increase their joy.