Reminiscing

It is amazing how spending the day with an old friend can really breakdown the frantic lifestyle we live in and bring you to a holistic perspective that allows us to calmly reflect on the changes in each of our lives.

A busy existence generated a fork in life paths between myself and a very good friend where once existed a shared vision of the same dream. I’ve known Mike since I had just entered High School, as he was one of my older brother’s best friends. Later in life, our paths intersected and became a road by the sharing of talents as we were both fellow musicians.

After returning from the Peace Corps, we had decided that several of us were going to join and build a band together (this would be our second attempt at the same band, minus the lead-guitar player whom was more interested in female leads that sang over-produced “pop” music scraped from the radio than playing original compositions). It was decided that we would build a house together (well, actually Mike make the decision), and we would all live there, record there, and make that our home base to tour from.

Life and love interceded in the middle of the plans, and I stepped back to move in with the woman I would eventually marry. Mike moved back to Nicaragua and met the woman he would marry. They returned to the US as a threesome (a young daughter of Mike’s wife in tow), and we again tried to start something part-time on the side.

In the end, noble intentions failed to manifest themselves in firm manufacture on my part, and years grew between contacts.

On a cold February day, I dragged wife and family through weather conditions imported from somewhere north of Nome, Alaska (negative digit temperatures, 40+ mps winds, zero visibility, pileups that closed the highway at multiple points… well, you know, the sort of driving conditions I love most) to visit with a long lost friend.

Their home was the warmest in hospitality which stood in stark contrast to the weather outside. Our families spent the better part of the day together enjoying each other’s company while Mike cooked a feast of native tastes from South America.

In talking and catching up together, I was reminded just how important it is to make these lifelong connections with people and how interacting with them can bring us vision not only into our friendships but into ourselves as well. I’ve always felt a close bond with Mike, and had really wanted him to be my best man at my wedding, yet time and distance separated the possibility, and though years existed between our last contact, the conversation never reflected it.

Good friends are forever, that much is for sure, and no matter where life takes us, what we think of ourselves, or how we choose to live, these good bonds can bring greatness to those that try and forge them.

Will you be my friend?

jp