Life-long friends are an invaluable pleasure, and utterly irreplaceable.
Growing up in small town Sheffield, Illinois, five of us became acquainted weeks after birth, traversed grade school, high school, and attended college together. Our moms worked as Cub Scout den mothers, elementary school teachers, housewives, and grocery store cashiers. Our dads melded as carpenters, electricians, farmers, and entrepreneurs. Although five inches shorter and forty pounds lighter, the carpenter carried my farmer dad off a grain elevator when vertigo struck him down. The electrician raised seven children by himself when his beloved wife passed in her 30’s. The entrepreneur always gave me work when I needed cash to pursue an education. He didn’t need me, but he knew I needed him. Some people scoff at the idea that it takes a village.
I don’t.
Into the Wind 