Lifetime Friends

I didn't intend for my second blog to be so closely connected to the first, but this one also has to do with letters.

The two smiling ladies in this photo began their friendship as Pen Pals some 61 years ago. That's me on the left, and Jenny on the right, next to her husband Mike. The Berrys live in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge, and we had a little reunion there just last week while I was on a holiday in the UK with three other dear friends. (More about that quilt adventure in a future blog.)

I was eight years old when I picked Jenny's name out of The Weekly Reader and composed my first "friendly letter." Ordinarily, this sort of childhood interest wanes quickly, but our correspondence did not. We wrote about our lives; we wrote about school; later we wrote about our boyfriends, our romances, our weddings, our children, and our longing to one day actually meet one another.

Countless letters crossed the Atlantic for 37 years until, one day in 1985, our mutual dream became a reality. I will never forget the exhilaration of embracing my sister-across-the-sea amid throngs of people in Heathrow Airport.

Times have changed, but our special affection for one another never will. Jenny and I are blessed with a relationship that warrants the appelation Lifetime Friends.

To this day, whenever a small envelope bearing the words Royal Mail arrives in the post, my eyes grow misty with wonder.