A good friend

We haven't seen each other that much this last year, but every now and then I call her, or she calls me. I am always just slightly nervous, remembering where I was last time I talked to her and feeling how much has changed since then. It's the old philosophical problem of time and space. How to recover and convey so many disparate months of thoughts and miles of distance? But within a few minutes I always realize: in her silent solitary hours of page-turning and pen-scratching, close-caught moments with loved ones, and confrontations with reality, she is thinking about the same things I am thinking about with my anxious schedule, long lists, and homesickness. And after we've been spilling things out for an hour or so, threads start to appear, and we are comforted to realize that there is coherence -- a narrative. How could we know that without a friend?

"A friend is someone who helps you to persevere." :)

love you, J!!