WHAT I LEARNED FROM GIRL SCOUT COOKIES

"Make new friends but keep the old...one is silver the other is gold". I read that on a box of girl scout cookies about a hundred years ago. (My cousin and I were both cub scouts by the way...but we only stayed long enough to make our birdhouses...we were afraid there were a few too many mentions of going to "camp"...a word that had always terrified both of us...too much emphasis on sports...and competition ...and scary things like dirty old sleeping bags and mean men yelling out orders...plus we were busy planning to put on a production of Snow White in my garage as soon as we could schedule auditions...we were much too busy that year to be bothered with oaths and good deeds. We were already nice little boys...strange little nice boys.)

At four AM this morning I drove down to the Amtrak station to pick up two good friends visiting from Japan. ( At least I vaguely remember driving down there..I was so half asleep that I worried for a few minutes that I'd picked up the wrong people and brought them home. Just kidding. Being the only car on the road seemed really weird...like I was in one of those end of the world movies like "The Road".

I met Lee the first day of my first teaching job in LA in 1970. We've been friends ever since, and her husband Peter replaced me in my teaching position when I left California in a VW bug after my first boyfriend split. Even Tim and I remained friends for the rest of his life. I'm always fascinated by what it is that connects us to another person so quickly sometimes, and for me, usually means that we'll be friends forever. I think it has something to do with authenticity. Sometimes we meet people and just like them immediately....without knowing much about them at all. For me, I think I sense a "realness"...and a transparency...and an honesty about their presentation. Right off the bat, what you see is what you get, like Lee and Peter. As I've gotten older I've also learned that there are lots of people who can really connect...but are unable to sustain the connection. That's a biggie.

Lee and Peter don't live quite close enough for us to hang out together very easily...but Peter takes gorgeous photographs which he sends out periodically, and Lee writes to me faithfully about every ten years. We've always sustained our connection with Christmas cards...or birthday greetings, and my promise to visit them someday. My life is blessed with lots of authentic people...some really UNUSUAL ...but undeniably authentic people. Woof of course helps keep me connected by sleeping with many of my overnight visitors...usually curled up in a single bed with them. My friend Lou from Naples is the only one who honestly likes that. ( So much for authenticity.) Lee has already put her foot down about waking up to dog breath, but I think Peter is hoping for his chance tonight.

So I do make new friends as we all do...and those magical first moments keep happening, as I work pretty hard at sustaining those relationships. My partner has tons of friends as well, many from childhood, and college...but worries that I'm a little too eager to keep expanding our Christmas card list. When he's waiting in the car for me at the Jubilee Food Market near our cottage. he's often worried that I've been chatting too long with the new lady in the Deli...asking me on the way home if I've invited her for dinner after I tell him how much I liked her. Our standing joke is about me inviting some strange little handyman who cut some bushes down for us to our annual Christmas party. I secretly put his name in my address book so he can be a surprise guest at our wedding someday...maybe  as my best man.