My Best Friend!

I am blessed with so many friends. When I was a 7 year old Brownie in the Girl Scout organization I learned a song that went "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold." This was sung in a round and though simple was kind of pretty.

My friends always have been very valuable to me.....such as silver and gold. I have friends from my childhood that I still keep in touch with. I have a very strong friendship with three of my friends from High School. Karen Tabor and I share the same birthday and this year on our birthday I got two cards from her. My friend Karen Russell and I don't always talk as often as we should but when we do it is for a LONG time...then we promise to talk more frequently. Her boys call me "Auntie" and I truly believe they love me! Pam Zoller and I have gone through life together. We are so different and yet I think we balance each other. After a 45 year old friendship we still talk on almost a daily basis.

So if those are my "old" gold friends, then what do we call the friends I made early in my marriage like Milly Fellbaum, Lonna Pectol, or Susie Westphal? Or the ones I made in Chino when I was a young mother like Linda Pratt, Marcia Torgerson, Barbara Gilbert, or Betty Hanson? Are the ones made when my kids were pre-teens and teenagers like Jacquie Smith, Deanna Valderrama, Gloria Kezos, Sherri Johnston, Kathy Harvey, Bonnie Gorski, and Carol Jackson any less valuable? Since I have lived such a long life do we call those "old" gold, or "new" silver. Or do they fall in the ranges of so many other valuable metals? So important to me were my "young" friends who kept me younger and saw me as an older sister, or a VERY young mother, Carrie Huston and Stacy Smith. When my nest was emptying I started collecting another special kind of friend....ones who inspired me....to try on hats, or take a walk in a park in Pasadena... like Karen Kimes.

When I first moved to Virginia I had only one friend, Marie Harrington. She paved the way at church, in the neighborhood, even got me a job with her husband. Other than Marie and Sandy Champaco I didn't forge too many friendships in Virginia that have lasted beyond the time I was there because I focused on my hubby....he was my friend.

When I moved to the Temecula area I renewed friendships with old Chino friends like Claudia Dunn, Rita Ford, Elaina Burgon.

All these friends were made in fair-weather, but they were never fair-weather friends. It is always dangerous to start naming names....too much danger of leaving someone out. Those that I have mentioned and probably a few that I haven't are STILL on my list of bestest friends. I can still give them a call and we can get together for a few laughs, a cry or two, or every woman's favorite thing "food"! I know that even though I didn't have terrible trials you were there for me....and when I did have something to share your ears were open and your shoulder was soft.

When I came back from Virginia and landed in Temecula I found I wasn't in fair-weather any more. Well it actually took a little while to figure it out....during that time I made an excellent lifetime friend with Katie Hackbarth who jumped the generation gap.....she was 16 and I was ....well.....OLD! Today she is 26 and I am...............OLDER STILL!

Fair weather turned a little less fair and I met my friend Vickie Tanner who was RS President in Temecula. She recognized I was sailing into dark waters before I did....she was ready when I finally saw the storm ahead. We strengthened and reflected the best we saw in each other.

I have really needed friends here in my Sun City Ward, and at work as I have gone through the toughest years of my life. They have rallied to my aid at every point...Shirley, Kathy, Joan, Anna, Leah, Lodene, Bill, Tom, Tim, and my customers are not just customers they are great friends. See how blessed I am.

There is so much more than silver and gold here. I haven't mentioned my wonderful Mom, sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters-in-law, sons, and other family members who are gems to me. I was talking to my sister, Lynette, the other day about my lack of talent.....I keep seeing the talents they all possess, and she told me that my talent was the friends I gather. That if each of them were represented as a flower I would have a very large bouquet. So are my friends precious metals, valuable gems, or unique flowers? I don't know....and I don't know that I can count each of you as MY talent...but I am blessed, so blessed by each of you, and so very grateful that you are each still in my life on a regular basis.

I'm grateful as well for those of you who aren't still in my life, but who have passed through my life and touched me, inspired me, taught me. So many young people.....who are now old!!! LOL and have children of their own. You mean so much to me.

The "tag line" on this lengthy blog was inspired by my best friend though. My best friend is and will always be Bud Trosper. I know this is a strange thing to say since we are getting a divorce. But the fact that our marriage is ending doesn't change the fact that he has always been, still is, and will always be my very best friend. In my large bouquet he is the brightest and most beautiful bloom, the anchor in the very center. In my precious metals he is platinum. Believe me in all the valuable gems he is no cubic zirconium...........he is the "hope" diamond. Even though there is no "hope" for our marriage now, we both hold great "hope" for the eternities. He is the one I feel the most comfortable with, the one I lean on, the one I call when I am the most needy. Yes, still.......

I have been sick this past week and he called many times each day to check on my well-being, he went and got medicine for me, and today he brought dinner in. Hard to explain how a marriage can end and a friendship continue. But it can happen.......and my ex-husband is still my best friend!