Lifelong friendships, I'm learning, are a rare commodity. There are, of course, the college friendships, the high school friendships, occasionally the grade school friendships that have lasted through the years. And a lot of people probably had to play with the kids of their parents' friends - but those mostly end as the years go by - a quick "hello" and a catch-up if you happen to pass them somewhere along life's path usually suffices.
I have been given the gift of a true lifelong friendship. Well, I'm not dead yet so time will tell, but I am confident that no matter where our lives lead, we will always come back together in some way, shape or form.
Of course it started out with us being friends because we were born into our respective families. She came into the world seven months after I, a couple years followed and our younger siblings were born, two more years and our group was complete.
Our families did everything together. No really, everything. Our dads worked (and still work) together, we went to the same church (even switched churches around the same time), we lived two miles apart growing up, played together constantly, went on family vacations together, spent the night together (all 5 of us) too many times to count, put on plays, made music videos (which means we have amazing blackmail on each other)...basically experienced childhood together. We became much more than friends - we were truly family. The body.
At one point the five of us gave ourselves a name. The Tipleys. It's a combination of our last names (apprently I'm obsessed with that) - we even made a rap about it (bear in mind, this was like 1991). We got really zealous and wanted to do projects to raise money for ourselves (who knows what we would have spent it on) but I think all we did was rake their yard once and sell lemonade to golfers a few times (which resulted in me drinking lemonade up my nose - it stung really badly - but I tried to convince the others to do it anyway. I don't think any of them did).
I can't begin to name all the memories we've made together. I think about it and my mind starts swirling. And what I love the most is that it all runs together. We are all ages in my memories. Sometimes when I think about one of them, she is four years old, and the next time she's twenty. Of course we've all changed, but we have this bedrock - our joint childhood - holding us together. The three girls were all bridesmaids in my wedding - the eldest my maid of honor. I didn't have a sister of my own, and they didn't have a brother. Poor Clay got roped into doing more things than any of us would divulge, for his sake. Sitting here and remembering literally puts a smile on my face. I actually laughed out loud, causing Andy to ask what was so funny.
So I reshared the memory of us playing "pioneer days" (this was a favorite of ours). This specific time we had an infant sister (played very effectively by a doll). Apparently we were holding a church service out on "the prairie." I might have been playing the mother this time - or maybe we were all orphans (we usually were) - and I think we had just learned that worship song "Sanctuary." We sang it very seriously as I held the baby. Apparently, the western frontier was just too much for said baby - she died halfway through the song (this was up on the "morbid moments scale"). I looked down and let out a wail, then the rest of them joined in, sobbing into their bonnets and kerchiefs - Clay, most likely, standing sentry holding a (play) rifle. Very dramatic. I was the oldest and could not have been more than nine.
I just now phoned the one closest to me, and we howled with laughter at our antics. She informed me that the creek, where we spent many an hour constructing a raft that we could never get to float, has dried up. This makes us sad. And then we get sidetracked, talking over one another, trying to retell all the stories that we can summon up at the moment. We are instantly giddy just Remembering.
As I think back on those times and how they shaped me as a person - not just us children's friendships, but getting to watch our parents love each other and be in one another's lives - I wonder if my own children will have that. Babies are being born by the millisecond around here, but will one of them be Ella's bosom friend? Are my future children's kindred spirits being knit in their mother's wombs right now? I deeply hope this kind of friendship for them.
One of my very favorite authors, Elizabeth Goudge, voiced this sentiment perfectly:
"No one year is ever quite the same as any other year, and the souls whom it cradles through their first months on earth are of a particular vintage and know each other when they meet."
