friendships for life

sometimes i envy her. my daughter. not for her youth, not for her innocence, not for her carefreeness, nor for the unrestrained future that lies in wait for her. but for her one special friend, ray. she has known ray since the very first day of school and they have slowly grown closer over the four years together, spending every hour in school with each other. it is a strange combination, the two of them. one much shorter, the other average. one slightly tubbier, the other average. one more aggressive, and whilst the other is not exactly meek at home, follows along without a whine or a whimper. where one is lacking in particular traits, the other will excel as if to make up for her vulnerability, pretty much like the pieces of a puzzle. good friends, and good marriages also, are like that.

sadly, ray has left the school and the two best friends have parted ways, the opportunities to meet up rare and few in between. yet their friendship persists. she is still her bffl; best friends for life. she will take every opportunity that she can get to meet up; come public holidays or days before even, the phone will sure to ring with ray asking if she will like to come over. such loyalty, such commitment, such love. sometimes my heart sinks when i think of the day when such strong tie will waver, when the friendship will fade. i hope that this never will. we all need a best friend like that in our life, a friend to hold our hand through the long walk of life.

i never had such a friend. that perhaps is my greatest regret. not that making friends was difficult, i had plenty, testament to all the changing of schools i did when i was young. but it was because of that reason also that friendship never lasted. each time a friendship was beginning to deepen, each time i have found a bff, it was time to move on to new grounds again and start anew. true, best friends would have kept in contact but it was an age when internet and e-mail hadn't been invented and communication wasn't as easy. mails travelled at the pace of snails and eventhough each separation was initally followed by a frenzied exchange of letters, it was soon discarded and neglected in favour of faster gratifications in a teenager's life.

it was so until i met her. we were two new students in a school of old friends who hung tightly around in cliques. we had no one else but each other and friendship naturally progressed. we spend many hours together, in school and at home, trying to figure out homeworks that were alien to us as new students interjecting into totally different syllabus. yet, i never saw her as my best friend. we were too different, or were we too similar? we could never understand what the other was thinking, and we never saw eye to eye. perhaps that was a blessing for we never fell for the same type of guys, each secretly wondering what the heck the other see in the apple of their eyes. but friends we stayed for the longest time. through high school. through university. through great distance and wide oceans. through marriage and motherhood. through awful divorce and growing children. sometimes, the friendship wavered and paled in the shadows of the intensity of life, but still we were there in each other's umbrage. she was the closest i had to a best friend. fate sometimes play the cruelest joke on people. perhaps it was never in my destiny to have a close friend so she had to be taken away from me. i failed to see, until it was too late, that she had indeed been a best friend to me. no one can turn back the hands of the clock. no one can give me another minute with her. eventhough sometimes i don't have the courage nor the strength to see her, she is always in my heart.

my heart warmths in witness to the love that is shared between ray and little princess. i hope that she will know to appreciate the beauty that she has within the grasp of her hand.