four leaf clover

When we are old women, we will sit on blankets in the park and smile.

We will drink red wine from plastic cups and laugh loudly, as people pass us by. They will think of us as two crazy old women, but we will know differently.

In the distance will be our children, and their children, and our future and our past. We will have held on to each other through the thickest of thick and known things that only best friends will ever know about each other. And despite our own personal shortcomings, we will love each other and accept each other, as only best friends can.

We will not hide our gray hairs with pretty scarves, or dye, but instead we will display them proudly as a sign of our age and wisdom. We will have long let go of our own small failures, and given up judging others, and each other, altogether.

Together we will have endured weddings, births and funerals of those far too young to leave this life for the next. We will have stood, with heads bowed at the graves of friends, and questioned life’s unfairness, but will have found strength from deep within and from each other, and survived. Together we will have traveled down life’s path so long that often we sat with nothing at all to say. As we toast each other with our red cups we will remember hundreds of road trips in complete silence. There was nothing to say, after all, to someone that knew you better than you knew yourself. Endurance our mantra now. Endure.

In our lifetimes we will have seen heroes, far too many to mention, but on most days, we will try to remember to mention as many as possible, and remember those who we did not mention. Those people, those life heroes, we keep close to our heart.

We will have seen politicians fall from grace, wars that took place despite our disapproval and countless attacks on innocent schoolchildren. In so many ways we have seen more than imaginable. This is why we have each other. To endure.

Together we will have shed countless tears for those lost, those found, and those still missing. We will raise our plastic cups in silence, to toast one another, and those who could not toast with us. We will never forget. The days at the beach, the schoolyard, and long road trips in the lime green dart always seemed special, and they were. We were lucky then to believe those were the best days of our lives. We know better now. We smile at each other and live in the moment. We know that this is the best day of our life and every day that follows will replace it.

The world may see two crazy old women on blankets in the park, but we will see something different.

We will see two young girls, one in lace collars and long skirts and the other in soccer shorts and yellow Chuck Taylor’s. We will see each other for who we are, and who we have become.

When we are old women, we will sit on blankets in the park and smile, because we will have learned the secret of life.

Author’s note:

(written for my best friend Christine Bissonnette nine years ago, and re written from memory as close to the original as possible)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Essays.



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