There are some moments with friends, or words, that are like jewels or lightning bolts or double rainbows: they seem to reach me and touch me in a way that is more direct, more unfiltered, more powerful and profound than others, clear as crystals and warm like an embracing hug.
I’ve felt several of these over the past couple weeks, the latest just this morning in a text message from one of my best friends from grad school with whom I video-chatted yesterday (we have known each other and been good friends for fifteen years): “… I also enjoyed seeing you and noticing the changes — you looked very young to me, like a 20-year-old boy”!
In a video-chat last week I told one of my oldest and closest friends (we met twenty-five years ago, when we were teenagers): “Ich bin ein Knabe”, and she replied, “Ja, ich weiss, das warst du immer” [“I’m a boy”; “Yes, I know, you always were”].
At the end of a meeting with a good friend last week in the city from which I was moving out, as I thanked him for riding his bicycle all the way to my storage unit to hang out with me in a part of town that isn’t particularly pretty, “Thanks for riding all the way over here”, and he replied, “Of course — you came much further”!
The photoshoot with my artist & swimmer friend ten days ago in one of our favorite parks: a photoshoot that we had been wanting to do for months, that was a celebration of our friendship, of our shared artistic and non-binary identities, of our mutual trust and understanding, and also a playful afternoon together on a sunny summer day.
These moments, or words, will remain etched and treasured forever not only in my memory, but deep in my heart and soul.
The Little Prince and the Fox 