Dove of friendship

Happy Humpday Peeps,

As we rapidly approach Christmas and are presently in the thick of the holiday season, I am making a conscious effort to pause regularly, seek out, recognize and count my many blessings. I have discovered that I am blessed in too, too many ways to count, both the simple and the complex in nature are in numbers that astound me, I have lost track... I am however, most unusually blessed in the friendship department. (LUCKY ME) I am over the top blessed in that I have more than one good friend, I am well aware that there are many people who have none. :(
For whatever reason, I have the most have the most wonderful group of wild natured women in my inner circle. Truly, I know the coolest, most amazing, bad ass and beautiful chicks.


I had a moment yesterday at work that punched me square in the emotional gut and left me thinking of my love for all these gals, but especially my bestie/wife Mary Dyer....
I have worked (in some capacity or another) at this damn gift shop on the downtown mall for fourteen long years. I love the interaction with people, it is what has kept me employed there and after all, is the only sane reason for working in retail. Every once in a great while I will receive the rare gift of a conversation with a customer that will deeply effect me.  Either the subject matter, the person or both will having a lingering effect, the positive just resonates....So this is how it went on 12/14/2010...
This woman blew in the front door on a wind gust that sent a chill down my entire body and froze in my toes that funny enough, were double layered in socks and in my furriest of UGG boots. I cracked some stupid joke about the cold and her reaction was as frigid as the wind. I thought "Oookay" and went about my busy work. Eventually it was clear, as she paced the jewelry counter back and forth that she was looking for something that could not, to her obvious frustration, be found. I offered my help, "you look like you are searching for something specific?"  and she reluctantly told me she was looking for a small, very plain, bronze dove earring. She further explained that she had purchased a pair at the store the day after Thanksgiving as a gift for a friend and that the friend had tragically lost one and she NEEDED to replace it. There was, and I am not exaggerating, a real urgency in the word need...
We looked together, her and I, spinning each earring tree slowly and methodically searching for these elusive birds with our two pair of eyes and to no avail, no bronze doves. I could see in each let down as we slowly eliminated every corner of the store as their hiding place, her posture was sinking into her spine and the color was draining from her already pale cheeks....She blurted suddenly, "I don't want to talk about it, but I have to find that earring for my best friend, I just have to, you don't understand"
She heaved a little as she spoke, as if a stomach cramp had seized her insides and stolen her voice and breath. I recognize that pain/fear, I have felt that before and I knew immediately this dove mission came to me for a reason and I was going to, come hell or high water find the damn doves.
I pride myself on not being intrusive, but do seem to have a way of comforting and coaxing people into divulging that which will surely make them ugly cry, there is an assurance in my eye contact, you are safe here with me, it's okay... And I said,
"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to say a word more, you said friend and I have those and I can certainly imagine the sadness of a cherished gift lost, let's pull some catalogs and we will look until we find a replacement that is at least suitable if not the same one"
It was then that she broke..."I bought them for my very best, my dearest friend, she was just diagnosed with a rare blood cancer and they were her good luck charms, she lost one having chemo on Friday, she's heartbroken, she feels somehow more vulnerable without the dove, I need the dove, she needs the dove"

I was in terms of endearment watching Shirley Maclaine yell at the nurse, "GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE MORPHINE" and my heart broke and my eyes welled. Long story short, I pulled catalogs and called jewelers and searched buckets of back stock until I found the doves. There was no way her BF was going into chemo lacking confidence, especially if I had any say. Apparently I did.
She thanked me for being so kind and so thoughtful and so sweet. WHATEVER, I told her "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I am irrelevant except for the fact that I also have a best friend and I would go to the ends of the earth for mine too"
I love my friends. I love Mary Dyer. As I age and get closer and closer to that statistical range of inevitable illness, I wonder who it will be? Will it be me with the cancer or Mary? Will it be Dana or Becca, Steph or Danielle? I hate it. I wish there were a way we could all get by without blood cancer, or breast cancer or whatever the fuck... WE CAN'T, we just can't. :(
If it ends up being me me, love me. If it's you, I will smother you in love to the point that you get sick of me. Whatever the case, thanks in advance, just in case, to all my friends. Thanks for all the laughter and tears and listening and music and support and encouragement and the years. I really do love you all.... I know the dove is a symbol of peace but now, for me it will forever remind me of you all. The friendship dove. Tearing up again, sheesh I am wreckage...
And to my BF, my perch, as always,  YOU ARE THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS (whether it be dove or canary).