The best thing:

Reconnecting with old friends…..

Many of you know that I did not have the ideal childhood, but what you might not know is that some people loved me enough to try to give me the ideal childhood even though it wasn’t what I was born into.

My grandparents were those kind of people. We went to stay with them every weekend and did fun things and were loved on to the extreme. We took lots of vacations and every summer they took us to Sauble Resort in Ludington, Michigan.

I think I could say that some of the best moments of my life happened during those weeks at Sauble, which happened to coincide with my birthday every year. As I began adolescence I complained about leaving my friends to spend time with the people up north, but once I got there I was reminded of the special friendships I also had there. There were a lot of us in the same age group….I think at least 4 or 5 families and we all had such a good time! But by far, one friendship stood out the most… Sean Ford. I can never call him by just his first name, it’s weird. From like the age of 5, maybe earlier we were such good friends. Of course by the age of 11, I was for sure, at least for one week out of the year, that he was the cutest boy in the world.

The friendship that we formed was solid, and I had forgotten about it for a long time, until recently we were reacquainted over myspace…see it can be good for something other than pre-teen girls finding old men to flirt with! We have been emailing back and forth and getting reacquainted and talking about old times. It is like one of those times when you go out for drinks with someone you haven’t seen in 10 years…or going to your high school reunion. I keep waiting to get to the point where we are both like….uh, ok now what do we talk about… but it doesn’t come.

One of the first things Sean wrote to me was, ‘Do you remember what song we used to rock out to in the car??’ I immediately thought of this quote I had read… "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." That is true, even when the song is “It must have been love” Oh, we did grow up in the 80’s and 90’s people!!

In what could be one of the loneliest seasons of my life, Sean Ford’s friendship is a priceless gift. I think what I am finding out is that sometimes all of the love that we need is right there, just waiting for us to see it! I think we should all get reacquainted with an old friend… one of my best friends and I also recently hooked up (over email…I’m in Africa) with our 3^rd partner in crime from MSU, and it has been great!!

Today my heart is smiling,

Gigi

"I never had better friends than the friends I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" -Stand By Me