Old Friends...

This trip has been a trip.  Had dinner the last two nights with old friends.  One an old work acquaintance back when we were baby lawyers and just starting our own firms and getting our careers off the ground.  Then last night two of my old standing guy pals who I have known and loved for over 25 years.  All three men I have known for a quarter century.  It was kinda cool.

I guess I have been thinking a lot lately about the person I used to be compared to the person I am now.  Somedays those two people feel very far apart and other days, not really all that different.  I mean, I know I am different.  All these things have happened to me and for me:  aging, work, marriage, kids, divorce, returning to career after motherhood, living sober for 30 years.  It is kinda crazy all the stuff that has happened.  But I still feel inadequate a lot.  I still have the same issues plague me as they did back then.  I just think my “covers,” those things I hide behind, have melted a little and I see myself more clearly than I did back then (maybe this is just magical thinking).  I know I was more convinced back then that I knew shit.  Today, I am only positively sure I know very little about a great number of things.

Living a mostly erratic life and moving around all the time, old friends are hard to come by.  Time marches on and so do I.  It is hard to sustain any kind of long term relationship over great distances and it really takes the effort of all parties to keep that going.  And I guess I am grateful to be reconnected to someone from the distant past, and I am super grateful for the effort expended by two men I loved like brothers all these years.  There is something super comforting and safe about having the love and respect of people over time.  All the versions of you and them that have survived the every day monotony, and all the ups and downs of life just doing what it does.  I have not lived in the same city as them since 2001.  The fact that they still make time to see me every time I am in town, is no small miracle.

I guess what I am trying to say, with way too many words, is I am grateful to have them in my life.  I am grateful to reconnect with people from the past.  I am grateful to still be here and have people I love and care about who love and care about me back.  I am not necessarily an easy person to love.  I am not great at communicating and even worse at commitment.  But somehow, the love and friendship has survived all this time.  And for the recent reconnection, I am remembered well, even though it was a million years ago when we were younger, hotter and throughly believed that life would turn out differently.

Coming back to DC for work has been a great trip back in time.  A walk through my past with more insight, more knowledge and more perspective.  It is heartwarming and heartening to walk back into a life you left and still have loving, warm relationships waiting for your return.  There is such value in old friends but there is also great value in being an old friend.  Seeing how much you have changed, and how much you haven’t when placed up against your own history.

This week has been comforting and wonderful.  Like a warm embrace from a caring soul on a cold day.  It is high honor indeed that with all the transitoriness and disposability of today’s world to have people who still value you as a person, who find that you and all your glorious and not so glorious parts, are worthy of putting forth the effort to sustain relations over time.  Old friends that love you for who you were, you are and who you will be are life affirming, a connective thread to your evolution as a person, human and soul.  It is a great honor to have old friends.  Truly.

Again, still.

We forgot to take photos last night, but this is from Karl's wedding last year. Love these two!