Little Miracles

As I sit here in front of my laptop with my shoulders poised and my legs criss-crossed in front of me I ponder. How is it that when the passing of current seconds collide with seconds lived in the past you experience a moment in euphoric memory? Decades melt away like liquid dreams into a rusty drain before your eyes. You force yourself to blink and yet the clarity of the modernized past is laid out before you like it never passed. There is no timestamp on friendship. That in itself is rare and just maybe is myself experiencing a miracle.

If that is the correct definition of a miracle, than this weekend, I had an experience in the form of two rekindled friendships.

I remember you. The same black eyes that sparkled at me across our desks as we easily printed our names on the nameplate on our desks. As the rest of the class struggled to achieve the task I remember exchanging laughter in our eyes and watching your freckled cheeks turn moving to show your smile. We knew we shared something as we glanced at the nameplates. Our names will never be pronounced correctly. We were friends for that year. Then forgotten until twenty years later when we greeted each other with the same elementary school eyes concealed in our now adult faces. The topics are different today but the conversation echoes from yesterday. As you take my small hand in yours so strong now I say to you "it's good to have you back my friend".

I can still see that little spot of chipped paint on our gray locker where the combination lock had been tossed into it year after year. I remember rounding up the gang at registration so that we could all have our lockers in a solitary line. It was our little territory, our row of lockers, the girls. We were invincible back in those innocent days before parents moved us around, extra-curricular activities monopolized our time and boyfriends took capture of each moment left in between. Who would have thought that in just two precious years our little connective worlds were going to be torn apart and our friendship forgotten. Thirteen years later we sit together laughing and sharing our stories like we never lost the time in between now and then. Obvious differences from the paths we walked down stand out like that old paint on our locker and yet the trust is still as solid as that combination lock. We both still have the right numbers and can unlock them together. We raise our glasses at each other and proudly declare "let's never forget again".

Sharing time between two beautiful people from my past and reveling in the friendship we shared then and the friendship we still share now I am inspired. A year ago I was so alone, lost in my hopeless world of heartbreak, betrayl and pain. Today I walk into old doorframes and am greeted by unjudgmental faces that remember the person I was before I lost myself into that world of shadows. The remembrance of those older happy memories heals those of the painful and newer. It is bringing me back to life, one friendship, one hand and one smile at a time.

I'm finding myself again. This must be a miracle.