Friends

Imagine buying a house forty years ago and the day after you move in someone knocks on your door at 6:30 A.M.  It is a tall woman bearing a warm, homemade coffee cake.  Her name is Judy and her back yard butts up against yours - sideways.

Later that day, while out on your patio, you see a man with dark brown hair, who looks a little like George Maharis, mowing the lawn.  It is John, her husband.

You are neighbors for about three years and even then you realize they are the best neighbors anyone could ever have.  You have tea with Judy almost every day and not once does she throw you out of her kitchen.  She almost becomes a surrogate mother, teaching you how to sew everything from neckties to suits and cook almost anything from scratch.  She teaches you mothering and when you adopt your first child, the two of you babysit for each other and then you move to different parts of town, but a bond has been forged.

When I am stranded, who do I call?  Nope, not ghostbusters.  John!  He has come out and picked me up late at night when the Megabus broke down and from the ER when they thought I was having a heart attack.  And today he put together these stools for me in less time than it took me to nearly ruin one.  When I asked what I could do for them in return?  They gave me their home grown tomatoes!

I remember once, when I hadn't seen them for years, I got caught out in a thunder storm on my bike and showed up at their back door before seven in the morning on Easter and they did not blink an eye!

People like this are rare in my world and so very precious I don't even really know the right words to use when talking about them.  But they are the kind of people that make "friends" an almost sacred word.