i just got off the phone with one of my oldest friends-blue- who lives in chicago. earlier this year, i had plans to be there this weekend- seeing the book of mormon tomorrow evening and big fish on saturday night. having dinner all over town, pitching a book idea to a friend who has published a beautiful book about her grandfather and  fire island in the 20’s, and just generally feeding my soul in both old and new ways. we talked today, because he had arranged a psychic reading for me on saturday with sharyl noday which i will still receive via skype.

we chatted for a while using the online tool and i really have to say how much more i enjoyed the conversation while looking at his face. there are so many many memories for me in that face. i realized as we spoke that i love him as madly as i did when we first met that early morning in chicago in 1979 at that afterhours club named “columns”. if i remember things correctly, we strolled from lower downtown along the lake to boys town as the moon descended sharing stories about life and our perceptions of fashion, music, fate and hope. we became fast friends and later roommates, work mates, frenemies (during my oh-so-desperate drug daze). but we have remained connected these 32 years.

these days seem some of the closer since he lost his mother last year. he is struggling with physical changes that accompany the aging human experience and the combination seems to have opened his emotional world and be offering it to the sun. he mentioned that he spoke to another friend of ours, now living in phoenix, who asked him to tell me how touched he is by the arc my life  taken. blue continued to say that bill must have done some online research because he seemed to be much more intimate with some details and he cried as he spoke with blue. blue cried as he relayed this information to me, including details like blue had always felt that i was special, but i was never able to see that- how it was painful for him to watch me struggle through all the challenging lessons i have had in my life. i cried as i heard all this and was swept up in the idea that someone has been able to care about me all this time while i was unable to do so.

i sign off today in humility. i am gobsmacked by the fact that i am cared for by someone who knows me so well (definitely an old tape playing).  i quietly received a most unexpected and completely personal gift that came wrapped in a plain wrapper, but has stirred the deepest part of my soul. i must remember to give these kind of gifts as it is something so life affirming to receive.