Friends for all Seasons

While I try not to give money tremendous importance in my life, or let it be my litmus test of success, I do hope one day to have more money than I do. I’d like to know what it’s like to be rich, if only for a little while. Frankly, I think I’d be pretty adept at spending lots of money well. But if I’m never rich, I’d like at least to enjoy the pleasure of not having to refer to my Excel budget sheet before making certain purchases. I want not to live paycheck to paycheck.

Between now and then, because I do plan on a more favorable financial future (putting it out in the Universe, you see, a la The Secret) I will enjoy the richness in my life not measured in dollars and cents, but in the currency of friendship. I will value my friends, which includes family, old and new. How nice in my forties to have such meaningful friendships with people from high school and college and graduate school and various jobs, and continue to make new ones—like Erika and Shannon, Juli and Courtney, and most recently Ann Marie, who I mentioned brought me some lentil soup to the pool the other day. Polite and cordial at first, then friendly, she and I have become closer each summer I have been here. This year, after soup and recipe exchanges, and worrying about each other if one of us doesn't go to the pool for a few days without forewarning of other commitments, I don’t think it will be enough simply to send Christmas cards between this summer and next.

In the end, if the money never comes, but I continue to be blessed by friendship, able to while away hours on the phone with old, faraway friends, or over drinks or dinner, or at the pool in the summertime, well then, I’ll be rich enough.