A Tribute to Friendship

I hate moving. All that packing, arranging, hauling. Not to mention that for starters, you'd have to be the kind of person organized enough to be able to keep track of what you packed. Of which, I'm not.

That's not the worst part of moving, though. It's just the one I'm prepared to get resigned to and contend with. The other side that I dread? It's parting from family, friends and other people I've grown attached to. It's not that I don't care enough to say goodbye; it's because I care so much that I don't want to say goodbye. It's quite difficult. There are a lot of tears and heartache. But I'm an adult. I'm supposed to try to understand and live and make peace with it. So I try. Albeit unsuccessfully most of the time.

Then it gets particularly more complicated when I see my son get a first hand experience of the same thing. He's quite young and so cannot yet understand why in the world would I ask him to say goodbye to his friends. He's already in that stage where he's able to form and develop meaningful friendship with kids his age, with older and younger neighboring kids, and with teachers in school. And he did form those kind of friendships. For someone who value friendships as I do, I lauded and cherished those friendships he made.

So there was a lot of explaining and cajoling to do. Amidst the crying. And even more cajoling. And all the while, it gets more heart-wrenching for a mom like me to explain why we'd have to leave and he'd just, for the meantime, make do with e-mails, instant messaging and phone calls to swap latest stories of Pokemon, Power Rangers and Bakugan with his buddies. I would have wanted to shield him from all that pain. But the most I could do was minimize what I couldn't control. It is sad. But if there's one hard thing I'm learning as I grow older, it's that life isn't always easy and happy.

So, a couple of months ago we moved from one country to another and bade family and friends goodbye. We're determined to make it a temporary goodbye, though.

But, for the meantime, here's a toast to the fun, funny, wacky and the best friendship of my son, Lance, and his best buddy Gabriel (pictured above). Cheers!

Note: The photo above was a candid shot of Lance and Gabriel; taken on a cold winter morning in Washington D.C. It was one those numerous moments when they were separated from the group - two buddies alone in their own world. What they were talking about? We don't know for sure. But, they sure looked like they were having so much fun.

If you like this post, share it in: