/Childhood Friends
This morning I experienced a nostalgic case of déjà vu that requires a little backstory. Fifty years ago we moved from Kansas to New York, thus our two children went through most of their school years on Long Island where we finally settled.
My daughter met and bonded with a girl her age who lived across the street from the house we bought after living in apartments for a couple of years. Spin forward to today, when I glanced out the window and saw my daughter, now 58 years old and her friend Chrissy, from those long ago days, walking across the yard on their way to clean the house which we are moving into.
Plunged back in time, I thought, there go my little girls. One tall, one short, chattering as if those years had never passed, just like they were back then. It’s an odd but comforting feeling, knowing a familiar life can continue despite the passing of years and time apart. We left New York in 1972, but they never lost touch over the years.
When Chrissy and her husband retired from the police force in Dade county, they bought land here in the Ozarks a few miles from us where they built a beautiful log home. My daughter and her friend often sit together in our living room, and those intervening years are erased. Two grown women have reunited the spirit of those giggling girls and everything is right with the world. The term best friends forever fits these two to perfection. And miraculously, we all feel young again. Moving into the last years of our lives, it’s important to find something to hold on to that brings back a youthful spirit.
From out of the past
Even small things can make us feel young again. Listening to a song from our youth, receiving a phone call from a lost friend, even just catching the scent of something familiar from out of our past can bring yesteryear back with a flourish.
Velda Brotherton 
Those friendships are indeed preciousl