I so love cards from friends when the cards arrive like magic just when you most need a lift in your mood. Always works for me, but I realize I receive a lot more than I send, and I really should concentrate of sending more of them, myself.

These particular cards are from my dear friend, Gail, in Riverside, CA.  She and I met during our early-marriage and first-pregnancy days as young AF wives at K.I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan. Years followed where we visited back and forth, and now one of her daughters lives in Spokane with her family, so we are able to squeeze in breakfast or lunch or a nice chat session whenever she and hubby visit their Spokane family.

How lucky is this?  After 49 years of being friends … and still the very best friend that I have. Our grown children are now much older than Gail and I were when we first met. We are reminded how quickly time flies.  We are also reminded, each day as we check in with our e-mails, that true friendships live as long as we do, and possibly even beyoud.

Being a good daughter, sister, aunt, wife and mom are all reasons for trophies if you ask me, but so is being a really good, lasting friend, through good times and bad. We send books back and forth through the mail, with Gail’s daughter becoming our ‘docking station’ for books that have been read, and have pretty much become a Gail & Ruth Book Club of Two. We would never have imagined this so long ago.

Gail and her husband even met my 94 year old mom in Michigan, when my mom was younger then than our oldest children are now.  And they’re renewed their acquaintance with my mother’s 90th birthday party at a salmon BBQ here at our house.

A lot of beautiful water has passed under this particular Friendship Bridge, and I am so lucky to have this beautiful person as my long-time friend.  And like I said, these friendship cards seem to arrive right on que, and they always hit the spot.   Real friends always seem to know exactly what you need, and when.