Happy Birthday, Dear Friend

While moving posts from the old blog site to the new, I came across this birthday wish I had written five years ago for a good friend.  I will share it again on her 55th birthday today!

Dear Friend, Happy Birthday to you!

50 years!  Do you remember how my mom was totally convinced that it was simply too convenient that your birthday was Feb. 28 and suspected that you were really born on Leap Day even though 1961 was obviously not a Leap Year?

I know that not everybody is lucky enough to experience lifelong friendships, so I feel especially grateful for ours.  There are so many moments that go into the making of a lifetime. Here are some of the ones I remember best:

Sleepovers filled with laughter and silliness extreme enough to require a bandage for Raggedy Andy ♥ Your mom's baked goods the next morning ♥ Baskin Robbins runs in Lawrence ♥  Sitting behind you in Algebra 2 coveting your shiny, straight beautiful hair ♥  Making a Thumper sculpture in Art ♥ Losing our Art teacher far too young--both for her and the young "us" trying to make sense of it ♥ Battling for first chair clarinet in the Longfellow Jr. High band ♥ Spending the entire day together and then writing long, multi-page notes to each other before bed at night (our pre-facebook social networking!) ♥ College Roomies until Kent displaced me! ♥ The Taffy Pull ♥ Your famous quote, "Maybe that's why they call them Sloppy Jo...." about the taco burgers in the school cafeteria ♥ Shopping trips to Hays ♥ After having mono forevermore being known as "Puny" to your dad ♥ Dragging main ♥ You as teacher's pet, me as disciplinary target in choir ♥Your mom and dad taking us sledding ♥ Being spastic in Freshman gym...except in tennis.  How were we a good tennis doubles team?! ♥ Maid of Honor ♥ Locker and hall decorating nights before games ♥  Being 19, sitting on the wall in your front yard after discovering my first love had broken a vow that two serious, lovesick kids had made to each other three years earlier;  realizing I was finally free and sobbing from the flood of emotion ♥

Through it all you were steady, supportive, loving, always beautiful and such a blast!  I am a better person for having you as a friend.  May you have 50 more healthy, happy years.  And as the nests empty and we have time on our hands, let's add to the list above.  I can just see us on a seniors cruise laughing into the wee hours.  Think Raggedy Andy is still available?