Friendships

Friends are funny things.  The ones you feel the closest to are often the ones you don't see very often.  But when you do see them, the conversation picks up as if you had seen them yesterday. There don't seem to be any nervous pauses in the chatter -- like you've run out of things to talk about. You need to not only catch up with what each other has been doing, but you need to find out about their families as well.  After all, these are people you really care about!


We spent last week with our RVing friends, Leslie and Bill.  We had last seen them in Arizona at Christmas time.  We had had Christmas dinner with them and our friends from Albuquerque, Juni and Tom.  When they heard that we were going to be in Pittsburgh in July, Bill and Leslie rearranged their plans in order to be there at the same time.  When I suggested that we might stay on another week after the Mennonite convention, we discovered that they had already been looking for RV parks in the area! 


This coming Saturday, we are looking forward to meeting up with friends from my time at the Area Health Education Center.  Helen and Jerry are hosting a barbecue at their home in Spokane.  Helen and I retired close to the same time and Bettie has recently retired.  Steven and Cathi have gone on to work at different places while Bonnie, Kaarin and Judy are still holding down the AHEC fort.  I cannot say how excited I am about getting to see them all again -- and how delighted I am that everyone wants to get together.  This will be the fourth summer gathering we've had!


The thing we've heard from other full-timers is that the one thing they miss the most is their family and friends.  Our wandering life enables us to make new friends, but it's important for us to keep in touch with the old ones.  I started writing this blog as a private way for my family to keep track of what we were up to (and to make sure we were okay), but quickly made it public so that friends could follow along as well.  I also count on Facebook to keep me up-to-date with what's happening on a day-to-day basis with many of our friends.