Season of Love

Last year I traveled to San Francisco with some of my favorite people to celebrate a friend’s completion of the SF marathon (and to ogle the firemen giving away jewelry at the finish line).

Last weekend I attended the long-anticipated college graduation of one of my closest friends; the super fun celebration included a Ford Mustang Convertible (yes, we rode with the top down and the heat up), several late nights, a dinner party for 11, lots of laughing, and a full-on Santa costume. (Long story.)

Last night I listened to another good friend share her struggles to understand and accept a medical diagnosis.

Today I cried with a new friend here in Nashville who’s facing Christmas while grieving the recent death of her best friend in a car wreck.

In the 1996 musical “Rent,” the company sings,

How do you measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes—how do you measure a year in the life? How about love? Measure in love.

Every bone in my cynical body wants to avoid sounding all after-school-specialish, but the older I get the more I value the friends who have become a second family. This year we navigated a couple of moves, a few graduations, an engagement, some kids starting kindergarten, some new babies on the way. We shared a year of midnights and misunderstandings and also some moments of laughing so hard those cups of coffee almost spewed back out our noses.

Ugh—I’m getting sentimental in my old age. But this Christmas I’m so grateful for all 525,600 minutes.