Moving Day

No, I'm not referring to Lissa, though she's smack dab in the middle of it The Big Move, nor am I referring to the monarchs on their way through Lissa's neighborhood, though you've got to go read that story.

No, I'm referring to the fact that it is moving day here in our little town for some friends of ours. We'll be seeing them off later today, and my kids plan to wear black for the occasion. We met them our first year of homeschooling -- could that be six years ago? -- and the kids quickly became the best of friends. I still remember the delight of the two oldest kids (my Anne-with-an-e and their little girl, S.) as they discovered that they were kindred spirits.

"Redwall?!" shrieked S. "You like Redwall?? ... Oh, yeah ... these girls are friends of mine!"

(As C.S. Lewis said: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!'")

And they've been friends ever since. Last night, Anne said, "Mom, I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could relive the last six years with my friend." What greater tribute is there than that?

Last week, as I watched Anne give her girlfriend a going-away gift, and watched them hug one another in an oh-so-grown-up-girlfriend way, I tried to hide my tears from them. It was The Going Away Slumber Party and I didn't want to be the first one to introduce weeping into the evening. But, as I watched that exchange, I was struck by the fragile and mysterious beauty of friendship. What a gift it is from God.

One more quote from Lewis:

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

That's all I can really write right now. I have a long post churning inside, something about having 8 or 9 friends move away in the last few years, something about how just as I grow close to a new friend, she moves away, taking her children (and thus my children's dear friends) with her, leaving us spinning at the loss, something else about how God keeps detaching me from this world, and I keep going, going, but with protest and reluctance ... because friends, as Lewis said, give that elusive, ineffable value to our lives. They add riches we can't articulate.

And, as much as I may need detachment, the ripping away always hurts. God never promised that it wouldn't, of course, but that doesn't really take away the fact that it does. Again.