First and foremost I am grateful to my mom, who has been a tremendous role model when it comes to friendship. She has maintained friendships that have spanned almost six decades. She has a huge circle of friends that she has fun with and would help out at the drop of a hat (and they would do the same). She has spent a healthy part of her retirement sowing these friendships and making new friends. She and my dad (who is 8 years her senior) went on a cruise with members of his high school class a few years ago and every few months or so she still meets the wives for lunch. She is awesome at sending birthday cards, sympathy cards, and even just thinking of you cards. I pale in comparison to her on many of these fronts, but it is not because I haven't had someone show me the way.
There are many shades of friendship and I am grateful that over my life I have experienced many of these shades. I have friends whom I have known most of my life and friends whom I only met a few years ago. I have friends who live in my neighborhood and friends who live states away. I have friends I see a couple of times a month and friends I only get to see every couple of years. I have friends from when I was in school and friends from the schools at which I have worked. I have best friends who feel like a part of the family, and some of my best friends ARE members of my family (my husband, my brother, my mom).
I am grateful for the good memories I have made with friends and the good times that are yet to come. I am grateful for ALL the laughs. I am grateful to friends who reach out to hangout or just say hey. I am grateful for their reciprocation when I do the same. Most of all I am grateful that through our ongoing battle with infertility and fight to grow our family, my friends have done an amazing job of: giving me the personal space I need, supporting me when I am down, keeping the trite/trivial comments/advice to a minimum, and just letting me be me.
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