One of things we can appreciate as we get older are those few friends who have been with us throughout the years. A good friendship is like a good wine; it ages over time. Like aging wine, friendships have peaks and valleys, ups and downs, over the years. But through it all you are together.
Also like a good wine, some years the wine drinks better than others. It mellows. It becomes more staid and familiar, but it always delights. And then the wine passes its peak. Some old friendships do that as well, but hopefully the ones in your life last to your last days.
I was in Ohio last weekend for a family event and was able to connect with some old friends while there. The three of us go back forty years. I always make a point of trying to connect with friends and relatives when I travel. It is good to see the people in person rather than in the abstracted form one sees on a Zoom or FaceTime call. It makes them human. The conversation flows and we can get caught up on myriad events in each others’ lives.
The American photographer, Nicholas Nixon, made a photo series called The Brown Sisters that documented in a most poignant way the aging of four sisters, one of them being Mr. Nixon’s wife Bebe. The first photo was taken in 1975, when the oldest, Bebe, was 25, and the youngest, Mimi, was 15. He photographed the sisters in the same order throughout the years. For every year over the next forty-four years, Mr. Nixon took a photo of the sisters. It is a remarkable series of photos, and I encourage you to look it up online.
The reason I mention The Brown Sisters is because I am really fascinated by how we change over time. I think I haven’t changed at all, but others tell me I have. I note the grey hair I now have, and I have just noticed how much more grey it has become as I approach 60. Of course, I have put on weight over the years. Who hasn’t? But I look at the photo I took of my friends on Friday and compare it to the ones of them in high school. Well, at least we are still here after all these years even if we no longer are the youthful young chaps we were in the 1980s and 1990s. Life happens, you know.
So let us all celebrate the long-time friends we have had throughout our lives. They are one of the only real connections we still have to our past.
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