Bits and bobs

Random thoughts about random things by a random person

Tag Archives: friendship


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Memories: The furniture of your mind

I got an email from a friend recently that really touched me.

This person, whom I know from my days living in Calgary, AB, and I were an unlikely pair to become friends.

I was at the time, I think, in my early 30s and she was probably in her mid 50s. I was towards the beginning of my career and she was nearing the end of hers. I still had dreams of starting a family and she had finished raising hers. On the surface, it didn’t look like we had very much in common and the chances of our paths crossing organically were slim to nil.

But a chance Church assignment brought us together and resulted in one of the richest friendships I have had in my life.

It has been 13 years since we lived in the same city. In fact, we’ve both moved at least twice in that time. She has stayed in Alberta, but I have lived in Newfoundland and Ontario since then.

Distance friendships, like any relationship, can be difficult to maintain when there are thousands of kilometres in between, even in this day of technology. But we haven’t let that stop us!

Every couple of years we physically get together. She has either come to visit me, or I’ve gone there, but most frequently we meet up in another city and have a holiday together. Over the years we’ve visited Ottawa (before I lived here), Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Halifax and Boston. This year we were supposed to go to PEI for our next grand adventure, but the pandemic put the kibosh on that. It will wait for another year.

When we are together we do fun things, we have great conversations, (touching on the smallest topics to the greatest philosophical ideas and everywhere in between), we learn about the new places we are in, and we accept each other where we are. It’s wonderful. I always come away from a holiday (or any interaction with her) feeling like I am a better person than I was before.

So, as you can tell, we have had plenty of opportunities build a plethora of memories.

In the recent email I mentioned, my friend recounted many of those memories. It was lovely to relive them as I read her email. But it was the way she recounted them that really struck me. It was quite beautiful. Even if the email wasn’t about me and our shared memories, I would have still thought it a beautiful piece of writing in its own right.

The piece that really struck me and stayed with me was the following:

You have put beautiful furniture in my mind.

Isn’t that a fabulous way to think of our memories? What a gift we give each other when we share wonderful times together!

I’ve been thinking about it so much since I got the email a week or so ago. How we can choose to treat the beautiful memories as pieces of cherished, well-curated furniture that take pride of place in the forefront of our thoughts. (And, conversely, we can take the less than pleasant ones and put them in the basement or back room somewhere, out of sight.)

That way we can easily spend our time in the pieces that give us comfort and solace or joy and happiness whenever we want to revisit those moments, curled up on a literal sofa, with a cozy blanket, imagining ourselves in the beautiful pieces of the furniture in our minds.

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Day 6 (Sept 17/19): I’ve got mail!!

I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about this yesterday! So even though this is being written on day 7, it’s about day 6, so that’s how I’ve titled it. 🙂

As I was sitting at the sea-side of the house yesterday, doing my drawing, I heard some rustling at the back door. (That’s the door that I think I already told you is broken and I can’t get open.)

I looked up and through the frosted glass, I could see a man there in a red shirt. It looked like he was trying to put something in the mailbox.

That wouldn’t have anything to do with me, so I went back to my pencil and paper.

Then he knocked.

I went to the door and let him know it was broken and I couldn’t open it.

Then, quite unexpectedly, he asked, “Is this Lucy Cove?”

I was awash in a mixture of surprise and childlike, Christmas-morning glee! Mail for me? Here?!?!

I maintained my cool outwardly and simply asked him to put it in the box and I would go round later to collect it.

He did so and left.

Never, since I got here, had I wished that door wasn’t broken like I wished it in that moment!

I couldn’t just pop around the house to get it, either. It’s an end unit townhouse, with a carpark next door. I had scoped out earlier in my stay if there was a quick way through the carpark to the upper road.

Unless I magically develop some decent parkour skills on the quick like, it wasn’t going to happen.

I would have to walk down to the other end of the block and then back to this end of the block (on the back street) to get into the garden and claim my prize.

I was tempted to go right away, but I knew if I left off the drawing without finishing it, I would never finish it and it was something I really wanted to do. Plus, I’ve been practicing telling myself no and this was another opportunity for me to learn to wait.

So I waited – until I had finished the drawing and got dressed to go out for lunch.

It wasn’t easy. Every now and then I would look towards the back door. Or I’d look at the paper and think, “I could finish this when I come back…” (knowing full well that I wouldn’t).

I wasn’t curious about what it was – I’m hitting the big 5-0 while I’m here so I assumed it was a birthday card.

I did wonder, however, who on earth would have sent something to me while I’m on holiday in Ireland?? I remembered my friend Kelly had texted me a few days before I left, asking when I would be leaving for my trip, so I thought then that it must have been her.

Despite the temptation and curiosity, though, I persevered and waited!

Once ready to go, and still not really wanting to go down the block, to come back a block, and then have to turn around and go back up that block (which was the actual direction I needed to go for lunch and errands), I thought I’d take another look at the carpark.

Maybe I could scale the stone wall? Maybe it wasn’t as high as I remembered?

I scoped it out and, yeah, it was high. Too high for my almost-fifty, unathletic body at any rate. Bummer.

I took a gander to the left side of the lot to see if there was any hope in that direction…Hmmm…Did I see a break in the large boulders that bordered it? Did that look like a path between the boulders and the fenced-off field next door??

Off I toddled to check it out. Sure enough – there was a small path that I hadn’t seen before! I scrambled between/over two boulders and up the path to the other road. Then I went through the gate to the back garden and, through a little jungle of flies and webs, I claimed my prize!!!

There was another surprise when I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Kelly and I have known each other for decades now and I am familiar with her writing. This wasn’t it.

Now, totally flummoxed, I looked to the top left corner of the envelope.

It was from my friend Trish!!! That was even more unexpected because she is on holiday right now in Portugal!

I looked at the postage cancellation mark and sure enough – she sent it from her holiday.

So here I am, currently in Ireland, getting a birthday card from Portugal, from a friend who lives only about 3 hours away from me in Ontario! How fun is that??

Take that, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks!!


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The five-hour lunch

A friend of mine got back from a trip to Paris a couple of days ago so we arranged to meet for lunch today to catch up. We both had stuff to do in the afternoon, and we have been known to have some lengthy (and happily entertaining) visits so we decided to meet at 11:45 to give us ample time to visit AND get our various errands done. How naive we were!!

Today was more marathony than even we usually do. You’d think we hadn’t seen each other in years instead of a couple of weeks. 🙂 I think our previous record was 3.5 or 4 hours. Today we topped out at 5.25 hours! We both got there at about 11:40 and we walked out at 4:55. Not a word of a lie. The only time I looked at my watch, I thought it was probably somewhere around 3:00. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was heading towards 5:00! It did not seem like we had been there for 5 hours!

Have you ever had one of those lunches? If so, because I’m dying to make a list out of this, the following might sound familiar…

You know you had a great marathon lunch when:

  • The sun hadn’t reached its noon apex when you arrived and was about to set when you left.
  • The people at the table next to yours were having breakfast when you were seated and the people sitting there when you left were having dinner.
  • There was only one person left from the shift that was on when you got there.
  • You showed up and the hostess said, “We just switched over from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu. I hope that’s OK?” And when you left a different hostess said, “Have a good night!”
  • You had so much fun you don’t even mind that you got nothing only your list done afterwards!