water color love.

I have this friend.  She's the kind of friend that will go out for Mexican food on a Wednesday night with you even though maybe Mexican food gives her a stomach ache every time she eats it.  But if you say, "Hey, want to go grab some fajitas?" she'll say yes without hesitation because she knows you love Mexican and she wants you to love your dinner.  And a few months later you'll receive a package in the mail with a bottle of Jose's hot tamale sauce and a little note that says how you made eating Mexican worth it.  She's that kind of friend.

Sometimes I feel sort of like a thief because I can't believe that somehow I have the privilege of such a close and consistent friendship with someone who is so very loving.  She has this radar, whose upkeep I am confident takes a lot of work and deliberateness, that hones in on people's individual needs and deficits, and then pours love in, like concrete in a cracked sidewalk.  And she does it across the board! For so many people, she just tip-toes around soundlessly painting the world with this brilliant water color love.   

I had the opportunity to live with her for four wonderfully unconventional and foreign months.  We travelled and explored and discovered so much in those months, about places and people, ourselves and one another.  We grew together like snaking vines on a trellis, full of all of the brilliant red wildflowers and all of the thorns, and when we returned to our normal lives we couldn't really ever quite unwind.  In fact I don't know that we could have figured out whose thorns were whose.  About a month into our residence together, she gave me a gift disguised as a challenge.  She challenged me to write a book and in some dauntless whim, I said okay.  Well I wrote that book over the next three months-- an entire book.  And when I finished, she walked with me to the local print shop and we printed it with the last of our money right before Christmas.  We hole punched the pages and cut them to fit into a European sized binder.  We spent the entire day making frozen trips to the print shop on foot a few days before Christmas. And you know, I didn't realize how much I needed to accomplish that book, but she did because that's the kind of friend she is.  

And it's ever making me want to be that kind of friend.