When I was a youngster, my best friend was pretty fickle. Though we spent a lot of time together on and off through high school, I'm not really sure what made her the "best" friend I had. After all, it didn't take much for her to change the dynamics of our friendship. Maybe a new girl moved into town, and I wasn't interesting anymore. Maybe she found beer and marijuana, and I didn't partake. Maybe she found high fashion, and I was too Cyndi Lauper. Maybe she found a boyfriend, and I was too female. Maybe her new friend slept with my boyfriend and I was being unreasonable. Maybe she found religion, and I wasn't saved enough.And then, every once in a while, she would send me a letter, telling me how sorry she was, telling me how important our friendship was to her, but still, in some backhanded way, blaming the problem on me. And I, hungry for friendship, would go crawling back, thankful that she'd bestowed her attention on one so lowly.
Sometime in high school, after years and years of this silly dance and several other friends who based a relationship on whether or not you wore pink to school on the right day, my thick skull cracked open, my old brain oozed out, a new brain took its place, and I discovered that girlfriends aren't always "all that."
But BOYfriends. Now, THAT was a different story. If you could find a really good one, you could leave all of your mediocre girlfriends in the dust. And that, essentially, is what I did.
At sixteen, I met my first serious boyfriend, who then became my first serious fiance. We had a lot of fun together. It was actually much more fun than any of my girl friendships, even with all of the boyfriend/girlfriend problems. But, eventually, it became apparent that some of these were more than your garden variety relationship issues; we were, in fact, highly dysfunctional. Let's say, for example, he didn't want me to have friends. Especially GUY friends...or coworkers, or next door neighbors, or cousins, or classmates or bosses. Aaaaand...he wanted to date other girls, like the girl who had been his best friend before I met him and had remained his best friend while we dated. It didn't seem very balanced, somehow. Unfortunately, we didn't part on good terms.
It was at that point that my second serious boyfriend stepped into the picture.
Bo and I had first met when I was about 15. We'd come to know each other at a youth group retreat. He thought I was drop-dead gorgeous, and he was floored by my winking. I spied him from across a crowded room. Our eyes met. I winked at him. He swooned and died.* It was all uphill from there. Well, there were a few speedbumps, but that's a story for another blog entry. Nothing serious. Don't panic. It all turned out fine in the end.
At that time, we were both too young for a romantic relationship, according to our parents, but we spent a lot of time talking on the phone. Enough time to find out that we really, really liked conversation, especially with each other. He made me think. I encouraged him to feel. I felt so comfortable talking to him. He enjoyed exploring new topics with me.
But, as fate would have it, we parted ways, due to circumstances beyond our control. He dated his serious girlfriend. I dated my serious boyfriend. It wasn't until years later that we found ourselves talking to each other on the phone again. Our serious boyfriend and girlfriend had fallen in love, or lust, or something like that, and we were trying to figure the whole mess out. It was easy to slip back into conversation with Bo, as if we'd never stopped talking. It was so freeing and refreshing. There was no jealousy, no competition, no suspicion--just an easy, mutually-interesting conversation.
That's what I love about my Bo. He's willing to talk. He's willing to listen. Conversation with each other is our very favorite past-time. Evening will often find us dreaming about our future, solving our problems (or, at least, trying to), evaluating our family's needs, making some kind of home-improvement plans, or just remembering those days when we were first dating and passionately in love, sometimes until we see the sun peeking over the hillside through our bedroom window. There's nowhere else in the world I would rather be than near my darling husband, talking, planning, listening, dreaming, evaluating. I count the hours while he's away. We touch base with each other several times during the workday. He respects me, encourages me, advises me, indulges me, and puts up with me. He. Completes. Me.
Today, I'm going to spend some time with some new buddies, a couple of girlfriends with whom I can laugh and converse and be light-hearted, and I'm very thankful for that. They're women out of whom I hope to make old friends, who don't care whether or not I wear pink on Friday or show up ten minutes late to our brunch date. They fill a need I have to giggle about silly things, like the difficulty of finding the perfect bra and the need for just the right perennial, though our perennial beds are full. Those friends are important to me.
But there will never, ever, ever be a girlfriend that comes close to being as wonderful and as bestest as my very mostest bestest friend in the whole wide world EVER, my dearest Bo. He's completely and totally irreplaceable.
I love you, you weenie. You. Complete. Me.
Now bring me a surprise.
*This was a popular youth-group game which I now inflict upon my children and their friends. It was called "Assassin," a game where one person is assigned to be the killer, and, in a dimly lit room, he or she winks at the others, who, in turn, die dramatically until someone who is still "living" can identify the killer.
