The telephone rang and I picked it up before call display could announce my morning visitor. I thought I knew who was calling, in fact was waiting for the call, but as I heard the voice say 'Hello, Ingrid,' I knew it wasn't the person I expected.

"Hi, Gord," I replied, with warmth and affection, although I hadn't spoken to him for five years. My morning agenda did not include reflection, but after I hung up the phone, that is where the drift of waning summer breezes took me.

We all talk about the kinds of friendships that can lay dormant for years, and yet the minute there is a reconnection, time drops away. It's not so much that we play catch-up; we do all that, but the ease of moving back into the spirituality of that particular friendship, the trust, remembered sorrows and laughter of another time, instantly reappears. We don't have to search for words or scavenge through tangles of threads, the woven tapestries of time, to find the knot that allows us to sink into familiarity or comfortable trust. We arrive in a heartbeat, pull out the frayed memory and load it into our present.

I first met Gord when he was fifteen-years old. He was sitting in the back of a jewellery store working on a political campaign for a candidate his family endorsed. He was calling constituents to ask for their support as I went about my business trying to sell merchandise to his brother, the owner of the store.
I was just thirty years old, struggling with my own success and saw nothing odd about this likeable young man, but today as I talked to him about our families and learned about how his youngest children, twelve year-old twins were faring in life, I became aware of how much time had passed. I also think he might be shocked to think of his children as having the maturity or the passion in a mere three years to do what he was doing, way back then. But, then again, he is their father. Who knows what they will become when they are fifteen, or for that matter by thirty.

Perhaps because of his presence in my life, taken at face value, I never thought of him as a kid. I'm not sure that either one of us made a concerted effort to lean in and become friends, but I do vividly recall the unifying force that beckoned Gord to seek out a closer relationship.

A mutual enemy is always cause to form an alliance. My husband and I had been played in a failed business partnership. When Gord innocently aligned himself with the same man, and began to experience the same issues, his intellect kicked in and he sought us out, trying to determine whether his own judgement was faulty or that we were the idiots his partner had maintained us to be.

I suppose, in the early days, having us to turn to with his doubts and his own self-realization, helped build Gord's confidence to believe in his instincts, but ultimately he used his own convictions and strengths to battle the dragon, survive and thrive.

Often friendships are seasonal. Their worth dissipates after the need subsides, but not so with Gord. He maintained a close proximity, watching my husband age and eventually die. By then, he was a successful business man, a very busy man, but he arrived the day after, stepped across the threshold and enveloped me in his arms. He asked me what he could do, and meant it.

I, the fearless eagle, the soaring predator that only killed for food, was falling. I felt like a sparrow, helpless and vulnerable, and so I told him about a silly little thing I'd appreciate if he could look after. Ivan had ripped up a patio stone and the space stood vacant, a gaping hole. Every time I looked out the back yard window, I crumbled, knowing he'd torn it up and was now gone. The muddy hole reminded me, minute by minute, that I would need to responsible for everything, even the challenges I was incapable of finding the strength to fulfill.

Of course Gord came in with an entire landscape crew, replaced the stone, weeded the gardens, trimmed the bushes and grass. I distinctly remember him striding up the driveway with his crew, barking order, not as a shrill drill-sergeant, but rather that of a man of expectation and conviction. If that was what he was going to do for me, then damn it, it would be perfect.

I watched a modern day version of the gunslinger move towards my townhouse as I welled with tears and appreciation. I needed to have that backyard metaphor disappear if I was going to take to the sky once more.

Someone will likely tell me who first coined the phrase that there are friendships that last for a season, a reason and a lifetime. In the ensuing years I stopped fooling myself, stopped calling reason-based friendships by that name. They were acquaintances, some lasting decades, some genuinely infused with real affection, but they were not friends. Sometimes it doesn't get to that point because of circumstances, differences in lifestyle, age or geography, and possibly, given a different situation, might have taken a piece of our heart with them on their journey, but they are not friends.

Seasonal friendships are often ended through death or a chasm that divides them, the proverbial line in the sand. The person we once adored, but who when given a choice between responsibilty or freedom, abandoned their children, crossed a moral boundary that remained un-repairable against our own moral compass. We only knew them as childless, adored them for whom and what they were in our lives, but couldn't face them when they took an ethical point of view so far removed from our own.

Then there are the life-long friendships, and even death can not erase the devotion and love these people brought to our lives. They taught us to give and accept. Those people can't be erased or forgotten. They are etched and forever remain in our hearts and our memory banks. Somehow, the knowledge that these friends exist in the word or the afterlife, changed us, made us better people and taught us how to journey through our lives with greater dignity.

Thanks for the phone call, Gord. You reminded me of all that is holy, valuable and sacred in my ability to call you and a few selected others, my eternal friends.