A Respite from the Storm

My very best friend (I like to say sister of another mother) visited yesterday after I got home from work. I have literally known her my whole life.  Here is a little bit of our history.

We grew up on a dead-end street.  There were seven houses with children all around the same age (no more than three years apart).  On our street all of the neighbors knew each other.  The mothers played cards once a month, taking turns at each other's houses.  I remember when my mom would get read setting up the tables in the living room. Little sandwiches and desserts placed around the room on the good china.  Falling asleep to the mummer, like a bee's hive, of them talking down stairs.

Anyway, my friend was one of five children and they lived three houses up.  I love the pictures at my parents of us growing up then.  What a rag tag bunch.  Each picture, though, looks like we're having the best day of our lives.   I remember being at her house as much as I was at mine.  Her mom, who died several years ago, was like my second mom.  She made the best bologna and katsup sandwiches I've ever eaten.  These memories are of a very young mind because her family moved to New York when we were only five.  It still remains one of the worst memories I have.  I remember being so sad.  What would I do without her? 

Well, we ended up writing letters.  I still have them packed away in the attic.  When I read them it is so funny that that primitive communication kept us connected.  They eventually moved back here and bought a house about forty-five minutes away from us.  So, our parents would drop us off for weekend visits that stretched into week long visits as we got older.  Eventually, we learned to drive and didn't have to depend on our parents.  One of the funniest memories was when her dad bought her a used car.  It was small and a stick shift.  She had never driven one.  I went with them. Her dad signed the papers and left in his own car.  She drove it around the parking lot a few times and then out onto one of the busiest highways in the state.  That was the scariest and funniest ride I can remember.

She is married with two children my daughter's age and two more who are in middle school. She lives two states over. Her older son is here going to school and they were moving him into an apartment.  So, she came over with her son and husband.  Sitting around the kitchen table talking and eating took me away.  For a few hours addiction wasn't following me around.  I felt like I used to. It was so relaxing.  Removing all of my thinking from the collection of sick addiction thinking to healthy living thinking was so mentally healing. 

I hated to see them leave.

Before they came, I had had a 'discussion' with my daughter.  She was between drinking and I threw some past history at her because it upsets me so much to see her like that.  I guess I was hurting her right back.  Nothing I told her was false, however, I'm not sure how much got through to her. 

Though I wish she could have been present and enjoying the evening, I didn't let the thought of her choices interfere with my happiness.  I wrote before that I feel guilty experiencing life while she romances her addiction.  I usually do, but not last night.  I was totally in the moment.  I think I needed to be in that moment because I can feel myself fading away.  Last night was me taking shelter from this storm. I was nourished spiritually and mentally and given back a little of the inner strength that has slowly been drained from me.  It felt so good.