[Gemme]

Like the Berry, I have friends that fall into different categories, but I'm only going to talk about one now.

There is Jeff (not her real name but is part of a family joke). We've known each other for so long, we argue about WHEN we met. She says it was one year and she was NOT on crutches. I say it was the year before and she WAS on crutches. She spent a lot of time crutches, for the record.

Tomato. To mah toe.

The point is, we've known each other since grade school. We're both Geminis and, for 5 days each year, we are the same age. We both love the written word and reading and talking and thinking and theorizing about things that are inconsequential to anything and anyone. I can only be like that with her. I can also have an entire conversation with her without saying a word. Silence is not weighted or timed with her. It just is.

She was the one who never wanted kids and I wanted a huge house full of the little buggers. Fast forward....she has my heart nephew (the happiest accident she's ever had) and I, minus one miscarriage, have none. Both of us are divorced, although I have one up on her. As the older of the two, I guess it's my job to do things 'more' than her.

She wanted to work for a museum, to travel the deserts and to be a fantastical archeologist. She has always had such passion for it; I just KNEW she'd be excellent at it. Plus, she's got good German blood in her and tans in a heartbeat, the brat. Her skin can take the desert.

I wanted love. I wanted a family. I wanted to save all of the children of the world, but my hopes of going into social work were dashed very early on. I would have liked to become independently wealthy getting that family and saving those kids, but I wouldn't be picky, as long as everything I wanted happened. Oooopsie. *wry grin*

If either of us were to win the Lottery, I know EXACTLY who we would bestow the money to and in EXACTLY the order we'd do it and neither of us would give it to the other first. We're linked like that. She's one of those, like some of you have mentioned, that can pick up right where we left off. We can even pick up the exact conversation we were having then.

Her mother was my surrogate mother and, for a short time, I lived with her family. They are a big family, in every way, and they enveloped me into their core....the safety of their womb....with no thought whatsoever. Many years earlier, they'd done what they could to minimize the time I spent at home and to keep me safer. They knew something wasn't right, though I never said a word about what was happening.

She and her mom are the ONLY reasons I went to college. The only reasons I've become more than a welfare check. Without either of them, but especially Jeff, I'd have given in to my demons a long time ago. And that's the best friend you could ever have.....one who gives enough of their soul to keep yours intact when you need it.

I have more to say but I'm at work and I need to skidaddle.