Keeping the old

I can still remember singing during Girl Scouts meetings, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold."

From 1999 to 2007, I moved eight times. And, thankfully, I've been blessed with the ability to make friends easily, so each time I moved it didn't take long to find a new friend who made the new location a little easier to adjust to. I am still close with many of those friends today. The beauty of these friendships is the ability to pick up where we left off, even though months sometimes pass between our visits.

One of the challenges of maintaining these friendships is the busyness of our lives. We don't spend all that much time away from the farm, and when we do, it seems like family events occupy most of that time. Our friends' lives are busy, too.

The other challenges of maintaining these friendships is our limited budget for travel. I try to send family updates with pictures of Dan and Monika by email every couple months and I send cards out once a year, but nothing replaces a face to face visit. Unfortunately, visits with our friends don't seem to happen as often as I feel they should.

Some good friends of ours from 'up north' were in the area this past weekend and stopped in to visit for a couple hours. We gave them a tour of the farm and chatted while the children played together. It had been much too long since we'd seen them, so we were especially thankful for their visit. Their visit was much too short, but it gave us an opportunity to catch up — and a reminder of just how much we miss them and the time we used to spend together.

We so enjoyed welcoming our friends to our farm; I think they enjoyed seeing the farm as much as they enjoy seeing us. As they pulled out of our driveway, everyone was smiling. Seeing old friends is like pouring water on a thirsty plant; what was once dormant is blossoming once again.