Since Seventeen

July 11, 2016August 16, 2016Alexis Rose

When we were seventeen, the only thing that mattered was driving our first green and red cars, talking about boys and getting out of high school.

We were so excited to get our first apartments, coming of age, dancing the nights away and sharing the news of our dates from the night before. Dancing in the reflection of our apartment window, candlesticks as microphones, any song as our backup singers.

In our twenties, we meet our mates and begin the next step in adulthood. Marriage and children begin to occupy our topics of conversation, but with not much more than a wink and a smile, we always slip back to the cadence of girlish laughter, shared memories, the ease of a forever friend.

Life takes us on different paths. A bond that’s still strong, but we’re separated by responsibility, needs, exploring different lifestyles and we veer away from each other. Both personally struggling with tragic and ever-changing family events, we keep in touch buts its sparse and shallow. Except for that knowing-ember of forever friends glowing, never going out, both of us silently trusting this is also part of a life of the friendship.

Forty knocks on our doors, life is still crazy but settles. We meet at one of our old hometown bars for a drink, and are once again, in touch, together. The conversations are different; deep, job, kids, husbands, life-conversations. We find we still can and will at any moment, break out into that fun, you better watch out, we will sing harmony to any song that comes on the radio, forever friendship that is easy and true.

We’re in our fifties now. So much has changed in our lives. It hasn’t been easy for either of us. The trials of life, of health, of death, of finding our inner strength. We have been there through it all. When I look at my forever friend she still looks seventeen. We can still sing a mean harmony to the radio, we can sit on a dock by the lake in our hometown and while away an afternoon with talk. We can take silly pictures, and laugh, feeling young, carefree, no worries in the world. We can also cry and feel the pain for what we’ve had to endure, and for the present trials in our own lives, our children or our loved ones. We can go through all the emotions in a matter of an hour. It’s easy, it flows, it’s safe, it’s trusting.

Never judging each other’s choices, always (even those years we were apart) cheerleading for each other, always forever friends. Since Seventeen!