Friends. What a wonderful word! What a wonderful world when they're in it.
I prepared a birthday package for a friend with whom I became extremely close this summer and who is working in Germany this year. I sent it off on Friday afternoon, full of anticipation and a slight amount of shock at the steep prices of airmail. I've been waiting, wondering anxiously when he would receive it and what he would think. Because this birthday package was no standard gift. It was an... artistic compilation, we'll say, of our summer together. But more than that, I felt it represented where our true friendship began.
This evening, I received an email from him, thanking me. But it was more than his surface words of thanks that made me nearly ecstatic with joy. It was the knowledge that he understood, more than words could ever express, what that present truly meant to us as friends.
And it is our friendship that has been the most incredible birthday surprise of all.
(I just barely refrained from saying "the greatest gift of all." I love cheese - especially Edam - but that's just going too far.)
Happy Birthday Jon!
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Oh, the anticipation of sending a care package to loved ones... I know it well, and I know how desperately I hope that they understand the meaning beyond the found objects, the painstakingly decorated albums, and the drawings of Whimpy.
Better to give than receive, oh so true. But better to be appreciated than tossed aside.
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