True Friends

ear friends surround me and make my world a happy place.

Friendship can start in odd ways. Perhaps the strangest way is becoming pals with someone you meet in the virtual world of blogging. You find you share interests such as collecting flying pigs and transfer ware china, or treasure hunting at vintage shops. The latter has worked often for me as I really prefer white soup tureens and I leave the piggies for friend Jenny!! Then, somehow you arrange to meet in person, and you have one heck of a good time together and the friendship blooms.

Other friendships started in school, with neighborhood playmates, or later in life with colleagues we worked or socialized with. The friendship lives on year after year until one evening you look at each other over a Starbucks, or a wine glass, and think where on earth have the years gone? Girlfriend, we are suddenly old!

When I arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1962, my first 'home' was a well run 'residence for young women' where, for about $25 a week, you had a comfortable room and two excellent meals a day. You were safe, no male callers were allowed beyond the lobby (my dh remembers those days!), and well cared for thanks to a lovely housekeeper who was English and felt like a second Mum to we girls. There were a dozen or more British women living there who, like me, had longed for adventure and to see America. We had been accepted, following interviews and office skills tests such as typing and shorthand (anyone remember that now archaic skill?), to come and work for a year in a secretarial position in our nation's capital..............this was when having a secretary with a British accent was apparently some kind of status symbol! The other residents were mostly young American women who had moved from other states to work on Capitol Hill or in other federal government agencies in the District.

Within a few weeks, in a room across the hallway from mine, Paula appeared, and life changed forever! She arrived from England and we immediately became best friends. The amazing part was that we grew up within a couple of miles of each in the same Devon town - but had never met as children before her family moved to the North of England. Once in D.C. we had a marvelous time, details of which I've promised never to divulge on this blog, ha! ha! We both decided not to return to England at the end of the year but to settle permanently in the States. She moved to California, married, and still lives in the San Francisco area. I married and moved first to New England, and then to North Carolina. Even with so many miles between us, for 46 years we've always kept in touch and met whenever and wherever we could. We even visited each other's parents on trips home to England over the years, but we have never been in England at the same time! This will soon change as we are spending time together in our childhood Devon town this Spring - how exciting is that?

2006 ~ Hilton Head Island, SC ~ Bob, Mary, Paula and Sterling

Paula and Sterling are not only the greatest couple, and the best of friends, they are perhaps the most traveled couple in the world! If they're not in the Guinness Book of Records they certainly should be! Paula has recently set up a great web site to share her fantastic photographs taken in places many of us never get to visit, such as Africa and Antarctica. Be sure to visit her here at Paula's Planet where you will see amazing animals, icebergs and much more.

Do you have a very special friend who has been a big part of your life for many, many years?