Conversations with old friends

“Don’t you remember?  It was just after my mother died and you said, get on the next plane and I came out with James who was around three and we were decorating the tree , oh and that was the time you introduced me to balsamic vinegar -

That’s what old friends do; they interject bits, speak in shorthand, because they know that we get it.  We have been through marriages, divorces, falling outs , near death experiences (mine when we were snorkelling in Egypt and I got into trouble and she swam back to save me) and deaths of loved ones.   I know the exact period when her mother died so young and how it hit her like a piece of volcanic rock straight through to her core which left her faithless and reeling and raw.  And she knows how hard it was for me at my father’s funeral distraught and pregnant with Lexi, because she was there.

- and we came up here to ski for the day and we sat on a chair lift and I turned to you and said..”

Here I interject,

“I feel closer to my mother up here.”

And if I die first or if she dies first we know that we can count on each other.