Over time, we realise certain friendships are rare – and very, very precious

A multicoloured thick book titled Adventures Ahead sat on the lowest shelf. I didn’t know when I was five that the new girl in grade 1 would become a lifelong friend. We got off to a rocky start, according to the speech my friend gave at my 21st birthday party (themed fantasy and fairy-tale), when she recounted that I had not let her play atop the arched monkey bars. (I don’t remember denying her access, but I do remember being fond of that top position, so I suppose it’s possible.)

What I do remember clearly though, is the strong girl she was (and is), with a gift for getting along with everyone, a girl whose energy and playfulness seemed to light up the people around her. When I had appendicitis in grade 6, it was her I chose to sit with me in the fresh air as I waited for my mother to collect me. And I still have the pretty little vase with a violet painted on it that her mother gave me, full of violets, when she came to visit me in hospital.

We went to different secondary schools but our paths crossed on the morning tram when she had early singing rehearsals. They crossed again travelling to university on a rumbling, sighing bus through inner-city suburbs.

So many people in our lives come and go. Some will never advance beyond an outer rim of friendship and a lack of proximity usually sees such connections evaporate. But others seemed always marked for us, an undefinable energy always present that made the connection sparkle. When we’re young we think all friendships will be like this, but over the decades we realise these friendships are rare and very, very precious.

Such friends hold counterpart memories to our own and surprise us by saying things that trigger access to forgotten vaults in our mind, releasing wisps of memory that rise to the surface like brightly coloured balloons.

As I write this from my bed, sick with the flu, my voice as deep and hoarse as a gangster’s, my friend’s quilt is spread across my doona, its cheerful colours pleasing to the eye, and the care woven into it just as comforting.

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