[There’s a tiny video at the end of this post. Please click the link above to read/watch directly from the website.]
Dear friends — As Marsha and I celebrate Thanksgiving this year, our thoughts — are with you.
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” Tennyson
Indeed:
- Isn’t having a friend one of the best things you can have in life?
- Isn’t being a friend one of the best things you can be in life?
- Isn’t friendship something you can’t do without in life?
Aren’t good friendships the elixir that turn a life into a love affair?
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~ Thoreau
Friendship is like a rainbow between two hearts. ~ Author unknown
Hold a true friend with both your hands. ~ Nigerian Proverb
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness! ~ George Eliot
I’d rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in light. ~ Helen Keller
Friendship is a sheltering tree. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~
Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend. ~
The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship. ~ William Blake
Make us worthy to have a friend. ~ Charles F. Raymond
Let me share my first experience of a friend.
It happened one spring afternoon at John Hay grade school in 1954 where I was a five-year-old kindergartner. I was seated at the art table waiting for my friend, Maureen, to take her seat next to me.
Maureen was my drawing partner and I was excited because we were to start a new project, something about coloring Easter eggs and Easter bunnies.
Maureen could draw effortlessly. Her pictures were pretty, her colors were always within the lines, her drawings were something you’d want to show your mother.
My pictures weren’t pretty, my colors weren’t between the line, my drawings weren’t something I’d want to show my mother.
But Maureen always had something nice to say about my pictures and her compliments made me feel so happy.
When I was in kindergarten I was a bit of an anxious kid. I kept mostly silent in class and when I did speak I spoke with a stutter. When the other children would tease me Maureen came to my defense and got them to stop.
I never stuttered when I spoke to Maureen.
But on this particular spring day Maureen never arrived.
I waited and waited for her until finally, in a fit of frustration, I went to Mrs. Carlson, my kindergarten teacher, and asked her what happened to Maureen.
She then broke the sad news to me that Maureen had moved away and wouldn’t be returning to school.
I stood in silence and then glumly shuffled back to my empty table.
I was a very sad boy.
And Mrs. Carlson could see I was very, very sad.
She came over to me, put her hand on my shoulder, and stooped down so she could look at me at eye level. She said, “I see that you’re really sad. You miss your friend.”
She then reminded me of one of the stories we’d been reading from Winnie-the-Pooh about how much it hurts to lose a friend. But that it’s a good hurt because we learn what it really means to have a friend.
“So, Pat, you’ve learned today what it feels like to have a friend,” she said.
True enough.
On that day I became a little more human.
I learned that we humans were not meant to be alone; we were meant to be with people with whom we feel safe, whom we trust, and with whom we can share even our most vulnerable feelings.
She said if I looked hard enough — new friends would always appear.
And though I never saw Maureen again, a new family moved in across our gully and I met Dave, a boy my age who liked football as much as I did.
I soon got to feeling better — I had a new best friend.
And so it goes…
Take a moment to think of the ways that friends bring happiness to your life.
They bring out our best.
They remind us we look good just the way we are.
They remind us to look before we leap.
They help us to be happy with what we have.
We are profoundly grateful for our friends.
Just a thought…
Pat and Marsha
Copyright © 2023 Patrick J. Moriarty. All Rights Reserved.