Friends

 

I've written on the subject of friends before and like many before me I'm mining said subject for nothing new but the known treasure - it's life-sustaining. My friends (the big people in this picture) make me laugh and make me think, they cry with me, they hug me, pat me, pray for me, run with me, watch movies with me, hike with me, splash in the pool with me and yoga with me. When nothing else seems to work, they pour me drinks, drink lattes with me or simply sit at my kitchen table and listen.
I love them. I don't know where I would be without them.
I don't want to know, where I would be without them.
Friends. Life's only true currency of wealth.

 

As for Gus. Friends is a slightly more complex subject. He has an idea of what friendship is. He wants it. He has a single friend (at least in his mind) and maybe a dozen more, who - when prodded by their mothers - will acknowledge him as a friend, though I'm sure he is not at the top of anyone's list for favorite playdate.
So for now, Gus is drawn to books where friends speak to each other, he wants the language of what one says to a friend and what it is one does with a friend. This is a hard one to teach a child, innately struggling with anything relational and anything so fickle and unpredictable as human relationships.
I watch him when he recites what he deems are the important lines on the subject of friends to himself. I comfort him when cries when his one friend, leaves too quickly or doesn't come home with us after the pool. He is so excited and happy when he "plays" with his friends, say on the trampoline or in another physical-no-words-needed activity.
I know he wants to be a friend and - if I can help it - he will learn how to make and keep a friend.
Someday.