The thin thread that never breaks...

I've been thinking a lot about the nature of friendship. It's partly because I sucked it up and contacted someone from a writing club that left abruptly. I broke all ties with her for a lot of reasons--some quite silly. Still, afraid of rejection, I wrote her anyway. Amazingly, she wrote me back and that thin thread that binds grew strong again.

What creates that thread? I've had few really lasting friendships and some have come about rather oddly (at least some might think it). My longest lasting thread was created 20 years ago on a bus on the way to see a David Bowie concert. Marriage, childbirth, misunderstandings...the thread has grown thin at times, but it has never broken. It is made of sturdy stuff, that thread.

Another friendship started completely online and yet became quite strong over the years, enforced by actual meetings, long telephone conversations. It's an often frustrating endeavor, this friendship--we are so different. But it has lasted despite all that.

Others I've been close to--that tenuous thread has broken completely. What makes it different, I wonder? Is the thread still there, just simply invisible to the soul and only waiting for some fine glue to reconnect it?

For me, I think it's a question of whether my mind and soul truly connected with that other person. I've often been able to tell just the right time to call someone I care about--call it a sort of 6th Sense. Friendships are a fine art and yet nuturing them requires nothing more than the ability to open up and let the walls crumble, to never let the thread become so frayed that it breaks altogether.

Take care of those threads my friends. They are our life lines.