Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. ~Virginia Woolf

Phyllis and Shannon made yet another trip to Buffalo. I’m sure when they’re considering their vacation agendas; they hope I move. But they always come. This year we went to Toronto and Detroit for Baseball and back to Buffalo for some Gardening. They’re really good friends.

I’m doing this post with some internal turmoil. One of the reasons I like writing and pictures is because I enjoy looking at life from the outside in. I feel more comfortable standing back a few paces and checking out the scene. I realize with my friends that I never want to take their pictures and part of me is annoyed that I’m writing about them. With them, I’m on the inside I don’t want to know how outside looks.

In his sermons Cam our resident priest often says that the sacred is something that is set aside. It’s almost ironic the intention of the original definition and what sacred seems to mean now. You’d think I rhapsodize about the sacred as it pertains to Sam, but I won’t. He is front and center and everyday and the intensity and the worry would make me crazy if I were inside of it all the time. Obviously I have no problem writing about and talking pictures of him. Because my friends are set aside, I can just be.

I want Sam to feel about Shannon and Phyllis like I’ve felt about Karen and my mom’s friendship. Wherever they are, we have found a measure of goodness.

I miss them. They have given us gifts whether it’s Conor’s mitt that Shannon handed down to Sam or Phyllis’s Christmas gift of a barrel full of Monkeys that I hang arm and arm in different places around the house as little surprise finds. And whenever he discovers one of their gifts, I get to hear Sam says, “Conor’s glove” or “Phyllis monkey.” Little bread crumbs that lead us back to them.

An Addendum--Phyllis climbed Mt. Rainer. Wow. That's all I can say. I'm so glad I can tell Sam all about it so that he knows when our friends succeed they start the way for our adventures.