December 18 ~ reverb11~ Amistad (Friendship)

Describe your best friend(s) from elementary school, high school, college, and/or the present.


My entire childhood was spent as an Air Force brat.  I was born in Tachikawa, Japan and, from there, lived up and down the East Coast (from Florida to New York), Alaska and California.  My family moved every 3-4 years, which made it very difficult to make and keep friends.  Well, kids are resilient so I suppose I had a 'normal' amount of friends when I was younger...but since most of them were also Air Force brats it was very difficult to keep in touch with all of the changes of addresses.

Heidi's visit to Redlands, Ca ~1985

But I was fortunate enough to have made a friend in Heidi.  We met at the stables in Georgia  where we both had horses, at the ages of 11 (her) and 12 (me).  We were inseparable...until the day my family moved to California.  Heidi's family soon got orders to Colorado.  

My visit to the D.C. area ~ 2001

Miraculously we managed to keep in touch over the course of almost 30 years with a few visits sprinkled throughout that time.  Before the internet, email, Myspace, Facebook, Skype and cell phones we've maintained a lifelong friendship with snail mail and actual phone calls.  Through marriages, divorces, childbirth, remarriages, illnesses, multiple heartbreaks, job losses, new jobs, moves across country and every other major life challenge we've been there for each other...even if we were physically 3000 miles apart.  Somehow, we just pick up right where we left off.

It's so strange to me to be a part this kind of friendship with a person who I can depend on to always call or comfort me, someone to actually be happy for and even proud of me despite our physical separation...especially when more 'local' friends find it all but impossible to make time to build or maintain our friendships. 

Pier 39 San Francisco March 2009

Quirks and all, I love Heidi...and she accepts me with all of my quirks and flaws.

"The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life."- Edward Everett Hale