Shining Bright

How does a best and blessed connection develop, expand, grow, sustain over the months and years? I can't rightly answer that, but I can tell you that if a friend is a gift you give yourself, I have been very lavish in my wonderful friendship with Ces. This piece is for her, with thanks for a wicked good time this weekend!

It’s a February day when the sky finally assumes its rightful chilling brilliant blue and the sun has gained enough confidence to bounce off the gleaming crusted snow and across the tiny fully white hills that make up this park. Two solid black shadows stretch four feet before us on this frigid day. We are arm in arm, walking in silence and noticing every sign that the world is right today, that this day alone will right everything that could be wrong-- today, this day, when fortune permits two best friends to steal and share three days to catch up and wind down, to begin at dawn in the little green and salmon room off the kitchen for a fiesta cup of coffee, and then to linger, to hold hands, to notice nuances, to retell stories that are so long and so much that afterwards, neither can recall or retrace a single word or a single moment

In this hour, the teacher teaches and the extinguisher lies down the hose. The sun approaches noon and everywhere, in between the glossy iced over pebbles and the boundaries of the mostly frozen stream, even ten stories up where the sun breaks through those thin proud pines-- there is the serentity of friendship and the absence of foreboding. This is stolen time when one moment falls and folds into another, telling a story that is all too real, and all too rare, to be remembered on common days.

This is a day when the torch is put to rest and the brilliant light of friendship shines forth anyway. This happens in the presence of grace, which is the way that love works best. This happens when two people who know every petty detail instead look across to one another and whisper a prayer of thank you.

This is a day when no words, no deed, no correction or diversion or direction is needed. This is a day when two friends walk arm in arm in the park and remember there is a reason they are safe in the world.

.