If I could make it rain today...

I love the weather today; it's cloudy and cool. Perfect for sleeping in and drinking chai and watching movies like "You've Got Mail" under a down throw with my dog. Today is also a wonderful day because it's my dad's 50th birthday. It is hard to believe my dad is 50 years old. It scares me that my parents are getting older. It's like people say, "They take care of you your whole life and somewhere along the line, the roles reverse and you take care of them." I love my parents: they are vibrant and sassy and intelligent and full of life. I remember telling people my dad was 35; where have the years gone? I don't want them to get older. Maybe it is my whole fear of change. Maybe I don't want to get older. Who knows? All I know is when my parents stop being "hip" and either one starts to complain about their "hip", it will be a sad, sad day. My mom says 50 is the new thirty. I was recently told pink is the new black. Everyone wants something they are or own to be "in". In my book, I would love it if someone said...hey, Volkswagen is the new Mercedes. Yes....yes....

I don't have much to say this afternoon, so I will quote something I am reading. Last night at 1:15 am, I decided it was a good idea to begin reading "Self-Reliance and Other Essays" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Why I chose this book out of shelves of others, I have no idea. Maybe because it is thinner than most of my books, at only 117 pages. Maybe it was fate that I picked it up off of the shelf, because his words made a lot of sense to me. Maybe they made sense to me because I was deliriously tired but could not go to sleep. He writes and essay entitled "Friendship" and I really enjoyed it's overall message-- the importance of friendship in one's life.

Emerson writes:
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.... So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not what they have but what they are.

I have recently been thinking about the kind of friend I am vs. the kind of friend I want to be. I want to be a friend that expresses my love through not only my words, but moreso, my actions. I want to have the kind of love for my friends that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13 where he writes:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

This is something I am working on. This is something I will strive for. Emily Dickinson wrote, "My friends are my estate." My friends and family truly are where my wealth is placed. What to do with these thoughts? There is nothing left but to act, and sometimes acting can be actively giving a friend time and not doing anything, sometimes it can mean driving hours to see a friend for the afternoon, sometimes it is just being there for someone, even if neither person knows what to say. At times I wish my heart was transparent.... I need to be able to take risks. I take risks in my writing and in chasing a porcupine in a cave with a big stick (thanks Grant), so why can't I take them in the area of my life that I value the most. I will...