Highway 231 is Memory Lane

I took my folks down Highway 231 today to meet an old friend of theirs in Troy. Rom and his wife Jean have recently moved to Dothan from Panama City, and Troy's the halfway spot between there and here, so the old pals figured this was a good meeting place.



I sat there while we enjoyed a long lunch at Ruby Tuesdays, reveling in their stories (I eat stories with a spoon), and just amazed at how many friends my parents have at the age of 80 with whom they grew up.



My own life experiences meant that at around the age of 13 all the childhood friends I had with whom I might have hoped to eat at the age of 80 down Memory Lane weren't my friends anymore. I had a few people I ran around with, but I can't say that we ever really knew -- or cared to know -- each other all that well, and as soon as whatever situation we were in was over, so was the friendship. How I managed to find four people to be bridesmaids when I got married who weren't blood kin, I'll never know -- but once they had graduated or left school, I have only seen any of them a couple of times. They are all great and wonderful folks, I'm sure -- but I only know where one of them even lives anymore.

Of all the things that were taken from me all those years ago, what I regret the most are the years when I could have been continuing to develop lifelong friendships.

I'm very grateful that my sons figured out how to have and be friends and to have relationships with people that mean something. Maybe my greatest fear when I was raising them is that they would take my social isolation as a normal thing and develop it themselves. Thank God they didn't do that.

One of the phrases that annoys me most these days is, "It is what it is," and at least one of my sons knows exactly why I hate it so much -- but it is applicable to so many things, and this is one of them.

On days like this -- when I see how sustaining and enriching these long and deep relationships are to my parents and their friends -- a very tender, very vulnerable place in me opens up. It's the part that still mourns for the Girl Who Might Have Been, but ya know what? It is what it is.

Most days I don't dwell, but today got to me for lots of reasons.

But most of the folks who read this know this about me -- everything is a gift. Even the vulnerable places down Memory Lane.