Pre-Thanksgiving

Oh my goodness, I am so fired from NaBloPoMo! I have done gone and skipped a whole weekend. And I have been taken to task via email from some of you readers out there. Take it easy, will ya? Buncha blog-reading taskmasters out there. As the New Edition would say before Bobby knew Whitney and BellBivDevoe wanted you to Do Them, "cool it now!" I've been reprimanded, and now, I will try, in the sage words of Mr. Gunn, to carry on.

This weekend, while Biology Girl was here visiting, we had a chance to visit with someone I knew almost fifteen years ago. This someone was a friend I had during some lean times back in the day, when the chipper and delightful Librarian Girl that you all know and love was rather sad and Eeyore-like. Everyone has a truly sucky year in their life that out-sucks every other year, and for me, that year was 1993.
During that time, I met Jess. Jess taught me to drink passion fruit italian sodas in the winter time, took me hiking up the side of a mountain to play in the snow in summer, and made me laugh harder that I thought I could at that time. Jess cheered me up, slowly and surely, like an iceberg melting over months and months.

So last week, when Biology Girl and I saw him, after so much time had gone by, it was stunning. Because, after all this time, Jess still talks the exact same way that I remembered, and laughs the same way, and cracks jokes the same way, and has that great listening face that is burned in my memory so well. And more astonishing than that was the fact that I could look at the old friend and not just see what I remembered about that person, but I could look and see myself. There are parts of that sense of humor that are mine-- Jess got them from me. Or I got them from him. Whichever. I still crack jokes like that, to this day, and I have him to thank. I can see that the seeds that we planted as friends so long ago have grown and matured and ideas that I had with him are now a part of the landscape that we both take for granted.

We all have these people in our lives. The ones who happen to be there when we are low, who help us to feel better, and in the process leave parts of themselves embedded in us. These parts stay and become so much a part of us that we begin to think of them as our own, as if they've always been in us. And even though they are ours now, they were seeds sewn by someone else, and we have them to thank for that
gift.

Although this is true for every person that we've ever been close to, it rang especially true for me this week because of the time in my life I knew Jess. The people who are there when we are at our crossroads, and who influence the way that we choose to go from that day forward, are a profound and select group. In a deep sense, we owe our lives to those people, because had they not been there, or had they been someone else, they may have influenced us down a different road, and our lives would be a completely different thing.

So, when I saw Jess, and saw how we are still connected, after all this time, by the very personal things like our expressions, our humor, even the words that we use, I felt overwhelming gratitude. My life, literally, would not be what it is now; I would not be who I am now, if not for knowing this friend.

Thanks, Jess. Thanks for my life.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl