Old Friends

Not once but twice recently I have had something from my past come back to me and even on the same day. Though I know you can’t go home again, as the poet once said, apparently it isn’t impossible to revisit.

All on one day, I not only held my guitar and strummed the old dead strings, which prompted me to go get it cleaned up and outfitted with new ones, I heard from a dear friend that has been lost to me for nearly two decades. Both of these old comrades reentered my life so suddenly that it caused memories to tumble back as though they had been huge rocks pushed down a steep hill. I didn’t even have time to dodge. The irony that confounds me is that my guitar playing days and my friendship with Cyndy were from the same era of my youth, both of which were responsible for giving me comfort in a time when I really needed it. I didn’t even realize how much I had missed my girl friend and my guitar until I heard them both again. Sound is an amazing thing. There is nothing better than the clean ring of new guitar strings with the exception of the laughter of a long lost friend.

I started playing guitar when my two youngest kids were babies. I desperately needed something creative for myself besides changing diapers, washing dishes and running after toddlers all day. So, instead of folding clothes while they were taking their afternoon naps, I sat on the floor in the living room and taught myself how to play. I used a Mel Bay chord book at first and then progressed to a John Denver Song Book (Easy). It was a slow process but one chord at a time, one hour upon another, day after day, I learned to make simple music that I can now attribute to having been responsible for maintaining my sanity during those manic years. Plus, eventually I made a little extra grocery money by teaching kids basic guitar in my home after school several days a week. Though I never learned to play well, I learned well enough to satisfy that needed balance between the spirit-killing drudgery of daily life maintenance and the soul-lifting creativity of music making.

Cyndy and I met through our husbands. On our first casual encounter we didn’t try to become best friends immediately and stuck to safe generic conversations about children and potty training and homemaking in general. I don’t recall the first time we realized we could open up to each other, share confidences and bond in a way that only women know how to do, but from that moment, Cyndy and I depended on each other for the support and strength it was going to take to get us through the years just ahead of both of us. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but in retrospect our friendship was an obvious blessing. One for which I will always be grateful.

Catching up with someone you haven’t spoken to in seventeen years is not as hard as you might think. It’s not unlike placing your fingers on the guitar frets to make chords that you thought you had forgotten and discover you haven’t. First you find out about the kids and where they are and how many kids they have and what kind. You get the basics out of the way. Work? Marriage? Moves? And while the familiar voice and distinctive laughter is rummaging around in the back files of your memory, your mind’s eye is pulling up images that you know must be long out of date. Regrettably you also know your own image needs updating somewhat, as well. Then you wonder if you really want to see what time has done to your friend or if you want her to see what it has done to you.

Then you know it just wouldn’t matter to either of you.

This has left me wondering. How do we let go of people and things that were once so important to us? We move, we change, our interests and circumstances shift, but not even decades can erase what once was. Years invested should not be filed away and abandoned. They should be recalled and enjoyed often. They are treasures, perhaps the only real riches we can claim in this life. The years and distance cannot change what we have spent so much time learning about and loving and that contributed significantly to shape whom we have become.

Old friends should not be forgotten.
Because...

You light up my senses, like a night in the forest.
Like the mountains in spring time,
Like a walk in the rain;
Like a storm on the desert,
Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up my senses,
Come fill me again.

-Annie’s Song by John Denver