I was talking to my best friend yesterday.She lives in San Francisco, where I grew up, and she and I have been best friends for forty-six years. I love her pretty much as much as I can love anyone. She loves to read. She loves to eat great food. She’s funny. She’s generous, sometimes even to a fault. She’s one of the last people in my life who actually knew my mother. She remembers things that I’ve already forgotten. ;She keeps me connected to people from my past. I am so grateful for her love and for our history… we know each others strengths and weaknesses and we love each other despite our shortcomings. Want to talk about unconditional love? That is us, for each other.

Now she doesn’t knit, or even craft at all. She’d be laughing out loud at the idea of it. But yesterday she told me about a book she’d heard about and made sure to tell me about it. We don’t always read the same kinds of books – she likes biographies and true crime, I like contemporary fiction. But friends are friends, and I love that we always think of what the other might like to read.

We both joke about how we need an insurance policy of at least a dozen books on the night stand just in case of a power outage or a storm. Hers is a stack of books from the library and mine is a loaded up Kindle, but we are the same voracious readers under the skin.

So just now I started reading the book she recommended yesterday, downloaded in an instant from Amazon.com to my Kindle here in Mexico. And when I started reading one of my favorite authors, Andre Dubus III, writing about knitting, I was overcome with emotion and love for my friend who is so far away. I tried to call her to tell her thank you but either Skype or her phone are messed up right now, so instead I wrote this post to her with tears on my cheeks. Thank you so much for being my best friend in so many ways. I think I’ll be reading late into the night tonight.