Birthday Gifts Part II. Gifts from my BBF LadyTee

One thing my best friend and I do every year is that we spend our birthdays together.

This has been going on for the past 15 years or so.  That's a long time. She has fun planning my birthday, and I have fun planning hers. Although this year, she was a bit stressed about it. I didn't get that.

Anyway...

So my best friend LadyTee always gives me the coolest gifts. They are never expensive, but sentimental in value.

This year, she gave me a small framed picture of herself and her family.

And she also gave me some fresh flowers. And a polka-dot plant.

This is funny to me. I am such a tomboy. These are some bright bright colors. I think it is was a joke.

"When I walked around the corner and saw them, girl," she said, "I just had to get it."

That had both of us laughing. I don't like bright colors. She knows that. But she knew I would love them because they came from her.

I had both the flower and the plant on the dining room table, but your friendly neighborhood cats, Callie and Mitch, were NOT having that. I looked up and the plant had been knocked off the table. And they were going so far as batting it around. My loud shrieks broke up their shenanigans, sending them on mad dashes to their hiding places. Hence, the flowers are upstairs in the closed bathroom. And the polka-dot plant is at work on my desk.

And LadyTee always buys the best birthday cards.

And she writes the nicest messages in her cards.

I am thankful for LadyTee. I remember the first time I saw her. It was at Duncan Park, during our day camp's field trip in 1979. This bowlegged girl was walking around the pool with a towel over her head watching folk and dictating, telling folk what to do. I was only 9 years old at the time, she 10 years old. I couldn't understand why she was talking so much trash.

Who would've known some 35 years later that I'd be thinking the same thing she wrote on that card... "Jesus loved me enough to create you." 

That's such a bold, grand statement. There's no way I will ever feel unloved by God. He thought enough of me to give her me as a friend, someone who loves me unconditionally. She knows the total arc of me... and hasn't run away. That makes me feel great about life.

And she gave me one last gift. A shadow box.

For my father's flag.

I hadn't bought one. I didn't know what to even do with the flag. I wrapped in a ton of cellophane wrap and set it up on top of the bookcase until I could do something with it.

But she came in the door with the shadow box. And we figured out how to open it and put the flag in.

And dealing with my father's flag bought back so many memories of my father's burial, and the things that occurred surrounding it. I haven't written about it, but I want to...

To be continued...