My dear friend Beth gave me a valentines day card about 5 years ago... to this day it still defines what friendship and love mean to me. I don't remember exactly how it went, but the punch line was that our wonderful friendship was made up of a whole bunch of "everyday, not big deal moments."
One such moment was when she and I were sitting in the grass in front of the barn where Gus was living while Beth and I were attending Randolph-Macon Woman's College. We were painting her "bookshelves" (planks and cement blocks) a rich royal blue. I remember laughing, getting covered in paint, Beth taking pictures of Gus giving me a kiss while he was covertly looking into the camera... it was a great day.
One random Tuesday (dollar movie night at the cheap theater in Lynchburg) Beth and our crew (Anurupa, Sarah.. and I think there were a few other's along) dragged me off to the first Harry Potter movie.. I was a professed non-potter fan at the time. Basically I was morally opposed to anything that everyone else liked. I laughed so hard when Hagrid put a pigs tail on Dudly that my stomach hurt for a week. A solid week. The tears streamed down my face and I fell in love. Today I revel in the pungency and sincerity of the Harry Potter series.
One day Beth and I had been auguring about something.. She was feeling down, I was feeling annoyed and a bit hurt. We were in my little putzy pickup truck on the way home from the barn and the windows were down because it was a warm Virginia spring day. We'd been driving in silence for a few minutes when Beth looked over at me behind the wheel and said, "why do you like me?". I knew this was a moment to swallow my frustration. "Because when you smile, you make everyone around you smile too. It lights up the room and is utterly infectious. Because you are the least judgmental and most positive person I know. Because I can be totally goofy with you and never feel self conscious."
Beth lives in South America right now. She's been with the peace corpse for thee and a half years now. She'll be heading home to the States later this year, but I no longer live there.. I'm in Sweden, hundreds of miles from anywhere that she'll be. But we still chat online several days a week, talk about nearly everything that is going on in our lives (though hers is much more exciting than mine!) and we still have "every day, no big deal moments" which make up our friendship.
I've noticed with my husband as well that it is the unnoticeable moments that stick with me as time strolls slowly by. I remember one summer day several years ago when we hiked up to the top of a hill and ate pasta salad and hard boiled eggs. It was near the end of the summer and I'd been wanting to go hike like that for ages. The view was fantastic.. we took goofy pictures. It was great. Later that night we snuggled into our tent (me with a harry potter book) and read and talked. At about 4:ooam I woke up cold and feeling like I was coming down with a sickness.. and it looked like rain.. so I woke Peter up and asked him to take me home (we were only ten minutes away from our tiny apartment). Just as we finished packing up our tent the heavens opened and the rain came down in buckets. I've never seen it rain so intensely in Sweden either before or since.. but that night/ morning was spectacular. We laughed on the way home feeling very lucky that we were safely in our car rather than out in our tent in the rain. When we got home we had hot chocolate then went to bed and slept until 11:00am. Every day, no big deal moments.
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