Forever Friends

I called Andrina, my very dear friend from high school last Thursday.  I knew she was at school where she works as a high school counselor, but hoped maybe she had a rare moment when she had no students in her office.

No luck.  It rang and then kicked to voice mail.  So I just left her a brief message.  I was so excited about our upcoming Girls' Weekend back at our old high school stomping grounds.

A half dozen of us were traveling in from various cities for the fun.  One from Palm Springs, another from Loma Linda, a third from north of Bakersfield, and me from the Huntington Beach area.  Then there were a couple of almost-local girls coming in from the Ventura area.

I called Andrina to work out final details - a rendezvous.  Since we were arriving later than the others, I was checking to see if she wanted to meet up for a quick lunch before joining the others.

But I hadn't reached her. 

Over in her high school office, the phone rang and she looked at it and smiled.  She told the teenage girl in her office that it was her high school friend, and that a bunch of us were going to get together for a girls' weekend.

The girl looked at her as though she had said we were going to ride a donkey to Pluto.  

She couldn't imagine six old ladies getting together for fun first of all.  And she certainly couldn't imagine looking forward to a weekend with a half dozen of her high school classmates thirty-three years from now!

How lame!

Andrina tried to explain to her that we were more than just old classmates; we were sisters.  We lived most of our teenage years under the same roof.  

We lived together 24/7 for almost ten months out of the year at boarding school.  For those of us who worked summers, it was twelve months out of the year.

We grumbled about unfair teachers' decisions and the PE teacher who treated girls like second-class citizens.  We complained about cafeteria food and snuck extra cinnamon rolls out on Saturday mornings.

We stole the dean's yappy poodle and painted its toe nails bright red - because colored nail polish was forbidden.  

We snuck contraband cards into the dorm.  

And we even tied sheets together, secured them to the shower rod and hung them out the window to see if someone could really climb three stories down to the dorm's back yard!

We cried together when a fellow schoolmate died in a car crash.  We prayed together at lunch hour prayer bands and felt a closeness and joy that only comes with seeking the Lord together often.

We didn't just go to school together.  We grew up together..  We became family.

So when we met Saturday in the old cafeteria, there was a lot of hugging (and some very characteristic screaming and jumping up and down from someone who will not be named!) and excited greetings. 

We chatted and listened and giggled as we caught up.

We hung out at the hotel and talked some more.  We went out to dinner with a few other former schoolmates who joined us.

Then came the annual student/alumni basketball game.  It's still hard to fathom that we are now the old people who show up and don't have a horse in the race.

Sunday morning we had our traditional brunch at El Torito where we all agreed the corn bread dish was the best.  

The dietitian in our group expounded on certain foods' inability to work with human enzymes.  And some among us looked at her and smiled, trying not to let anyone know she was speaking Greek.

But though the entire weekend was so much fun, I'd have to say the highlight of the weekend came while we were all just lounging around in one of the hotel rooms talking. 

We talked about old times; about the cafeteria manager who had been a flaming homosexual; about the teacher who had a raving crush on Cheri; about how the elderly girls' dean blushed so deeply when the very handsome, very young boys' dean came out onto the lawn in just very skimpy running shorts one night during a fire drill...

Then talk turned to siblings and eventually to children.  We were shocked to hear that the wild child of our group who always bucked the system was the strongest disciplinarian.  We talked about how our children all had such different personalities.  

Then the one with the youngest children piped up.

"I have a question for you," she said, and suddenly the chatter stopped and we all turned to her.  She asked our opinions on  strategies for dealing with the strong-willed child. 

Then talk drifted a little discussing other general parenting issues: diet, tv, video games, college prep...  

And how we didn't have those issues really when we lived in the dorm at boarding school.  

The food's nutritional value was probably rated atrocious; tv and video games just weren't allowed, and college - well, it just sort of crept up on us when our senior year ended.  Who prepared for college?!

As the clown among us said, "Who actually sat down and thought about the pros and cons of various college's  programs, locations, rankings?  I was just glad one accepted me!"  (Although her grades really were outstanding and she likely could've gotten into any school she wanted.)

Then the same gal who had said so before said once again, "Okay, I have a question for you..."

Once again, the constant chatter came to a stop.  And in the silence, she said, "Given the chance would you do it all over again?  I mean would you go through the whole boarding school experience again?"

And without the least hesita-
tion, each of us down to the last one said almost in unison, "Yes!  Definitely!"

And I guess that is where I am going tonight.  

In spite of the overly-restrictive rules of the dorm, and the awful food, and missing out on school dances and so many of the normal high school rituals teens usually experience,  we'd not have traded those years for anything.

Who else has such extremely close relationships with high school friends than those of us who grew together at Newbury?  

We are so very blessed to have forever-friends with whom we can talk as though no time at all has passed. 

We have friends who have seen us through the sorrows of deaths and the ends of marri-
ages.  

We've been each other's brides-
maids and maids of honor.
  



We've celebrated the births of each others children.

We are more than friends.  We are family.  And we are so blessed because of it.