20 Years Is A Long Time...

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~ Aristotle

This year is sort of a milestone year for my best friend and I. We have been best friends for 20 years. Lysh and I became friends when we were assigned to the same home room in the fifth grade. I knew who she was before then. She had a pony. We had also been in the same Brownie troop in past years but had never gotten to know each other until the fifth grade. Slowly we became inseparable along with another girl in our class who was horse crazy. We played Breyer horses out on the playground, read horse books, and tried to draw horses whenever we could. Neither one of us are artists.

The next summer presented a test to our young friendship. My family was moving to horse property in the next town over. We would not be going to the same school anymore. We wrote letters, made phone calls and spent the night at each others houses and kept our friendship going. There was rarely a Saturday night when Lysh and I weren't together.

She's going to kill me for posting this picture!

Lysh was there when I got my first pony, and I was there when she got the horse that would see her into her adult years. We progressed from loving horses to liking boys. We should have just stuck with the horses. In about the middle school years we began showing at a small local club and it became an obsession with both of us. Neither one of us had fancy clothes or horses but we had a lot of fun. I think both of us still have all the ribbons and trophies won at those shows.

Lysh on Buck and Meaghan on Angel

Pairs Class August 1, 1993

Countless hours were spent riding up and down country roads or through trails in the woods. We think back to some of the stuff we did and wonder how one of us or one of the horses weren't killed. We made it through the high school years. Barely. That first winter after graduation she joined the military. I will never forget the sight of her pulling away from the curb on that cold day in Portland, the taxi taking her away to basic training. The next fall I went to school in Colorado. Completely separate time zones. We had never been so far apart. Calling cards were purchased and phone calls made. We sent letters stuffed with shiny confetti in hopes it would make a mess in the recipients lap!

Through the years we have both married, had babies and moved to various locales across the country. For awhile we might talk to each other once a month on the phone but kept up through e-mail and letters. The last few years we have come together again, talking on the phone almost daily and plotting various things that usually don't come to pass. There is something with us that just clicks. Something I have never had with anyone else.

Are we not like two volumes of one book? ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Here's to the next 20 years!