What do you do when after 50 years you have a whole weekend to spend with your best friend from childhood? The natural place for us to start was to get in the car and drive to and through the places where our memories were created.
We were able to map out a circular route that included our childhood churches, family grave sites, our one room schoolhouse, our favorite river. As we rode along together our conversation flowed as fast as the river. Our words flowed over each other like the water on the rocks. Memories were quilted together as we each remembered scraps of stories, working to piece them together and stitch them into place.
“Who was that old couple that had the parrot? We stopped at their house when we were trick or treating.” “Where is the farm of those two brothers?” (The one was big, noisy and played the violin. The other was small, quiet and timid.) “Drive slow here so you can see what has happened to this house.” Sometimes a place that had once been “picture perfect” was now trashed. But other places that once were dilapidated had been renovated to stunning beauty.
Scanning the landscapes of former farms everything looked overgrown and untended. Fields that once were proud of their freshly plowed razor straight furrows were invaded with random brush. Rows of regal pine trees that pointed to the skies once supported strong branches laden with needles hugging the ground. In their place now stood long bare tree trunks with irregular shapes and only a few drooping branches. “They are old now,” my friend explained.
“This road has changed! It is one big curve instead of a left turn. Where is the river? They can change the road but they can’t possibly have moved the river!!”
My friend interrupted my rambling by asking, “What are you feeling?”
“Emotions are crashing in,” I said. “A part of me wonders why I ever left this place. Another part of me is needing to recognize that the place I left is not here anymore.”
Now, as I write this with the benefit of reflection, I am filled with gratitude for the relationship that provides the backing for this quilt. It is strong, easy, mutually encouraging and fun. Fifty years is not long enough to weaken the fabric woven on the loom of childhood friendship.
Do you have a childhood friend with whom you could quilt memories? Share your stories with us we would love to hear them.
Silverstrands 
60 years ago when we were first “joined at the hip” I could have never imagined that 10 years later as young women we would enter the adult world and each would take a different path that would take another 50 years to bring us back together. A reunion where we would now be “joined at the heart” in a bond that brings us to the stage in our lives that we can realize the full value of what we have shared, have missed, have reunited to and now look forward to.
Our life trips here have had many changes, turns –some glad and some sad. The road trip we took during the last weekend was familiar to me as I have seen all these changes come about over the years but it still was an overwhelming event doing this together. My joy was two-fold. First in my own refreshment of my memories and the many changes I have experienced and was still experiencing as we traveled the 40 or so miles on this journey. Second, and most exciting to me was being a part of my friends trip from the past to the present. We were like kids again. Excited, eager, positive and together. We really haven’t changed or lost that connection that we had as young girls.
Our experiences and life style may have been very different over the past 50 years, Our core values we grew up with are still there. Thanks to our upbringing, environment and to God we are back together “joined at the heart”. forever in a friendship that has weathered a lifetime.
True friendship is forever!
As a silver-stranded friend, I love this blog.