DISCOVERY...

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. ~Elisabeth Foley

We first met at a music appreciation class for our girls at the Conservatory of Music when it was still located on 19th Street.  That was 9 years ago.

Our hellos turn into longer conversations into playdates into birthday parties into dinners to lasting friendship.  I still remember when my youngest sat in his carseat next to her newborn baby in her carseat. And now, both our firstborns are entering high school.

Her family has moved to the South Bay, and has travelled between here and Europe.  My three young children kept me on my toes. The busyness of life took over.  We've lost touched. 

Then we found each other before the Facebook craze, and have been touch and go.  We've been trying to get together since but to no avail.  

Years ago, I was able to photograph her family.  This will be forever etched in my mind.  Of course, the girls are much bigger now.  I won't recognize them when I see them.  But the memories we made are kept in my heart...hoping our paths will someday cross again.

"Here's wishing YOU and your family BON VOYAGE as you embark into a new adventure.
Stay in close touch."

This is just one story.  Yet so true to many of my friends who've moved away.  This is a reminder for myself to cherish each moment I have with them while they are still within reach.   

DOUBLE BLESSINGS!

Pregnant women! They had that weird frisson, an aura of magic that combined awkwardly with an earthy sense of duty. Mundane, because they were nothing unique on the suburban streets; ethereal because their attention was ever somewhere else. Whatever you said was trivial. And they had that preciousness which they imposed wherever they went, compelling attention, constantly reminding you that they carried the future inside, its contours already drawn, but veiled, private, an inner secret. ~Ruth Morgan 

(Full term; Six months)

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; 

A mother's secret hope outlives them all.  

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double. ~Toni Morrison

Grandmothers are the people who take delight in hearing babies breathing into the telephone. ~Author Unknown

 When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?  ~Pam Brown

A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. ~Carl Sandburg

~ OR ~

 God intended motherhood to be a relay race. Each generation would pass the baton on to the next. ~Mary Pride

 

SISTERS...and Mermaids

How do people make it through life without a sister?
~Sara Corpening