This is a no brainer. My best friend is Lisa.
But that's not all. Jim is also my best friend.
And Lisa's husband Joe is Jim's best friend.
And Lisa is Jim's best friend of women who aren't his wife.
And Joe is my best friend of men who aren't my husband.
So that means when we get together, its a four-way best friend chain.
And we hang out A LOT.
Because it's the most fun you'll ever have.
We have traditions. Rituals.
Weekly traditions, summer traditions, yearly traditions, Padden traditions, celebration traditions, hiding a coin at the Yellow House traditions.
When we go out of town, we miss each other.
Therefore, we vacation together so that we don't have to miss each other.
We first started "seeing each other" because out of nowhere Joe is like, sure I'll mountain bike with you and I'll be amazing at it even though I'm new at it, but I used to ride dirt bikes..."
So we started the Padden tradition.
Here is Padden through the years:
2016:
They've upgraded all the gear (bikes, helmets, clothes, pads) since these early days.
We pushed babies around in strollers in these early days.
2017:
Here's a mid-Padden diaper change that cracked Evan UP.
2018:
This is the year we tried the upper horse trails of Padden and the kids REVOLTED.
2019:
Last summer we did Padden by muscle memory.
They are getting too cool for Padden.
But that's not all. The mountain bike/Padden based friendship turned into something more.
When you live far away from family, you find and make your own family.
So the Blacks are our go-to people. They are our Family, Aunt, Uncle Joey.
The kids call each other their cousin because they heard that we are related by 8 generations.
They love, are indifferent, are in arguments. They rank who they like the best/least, they make each other mad, they make each other laugh.
Joe wipes Andrew's bum.
They are obsessed with the same things at the same time.
Currently: Zelda.
We've pushed the kids to low, medium, and high adventures.
They are brave and strong together.
Me and Lisa are brave and strong together
while
Jim and Joe are mountain biking together.
low
medium
high
mountain bikes
One day Jim asked me: "what friend would you want to go hiking with? what friend would you want to go on a road trip with? what friend would you want to be at a party with".
My answer was: Of course Lisa. Like, no duh. Always Lisa. But then in ADDITION to Lisa, I would pick and choose other great friends to join US in those activities.
Here is the measure of a really great friend: When I read something or hear something or experience something that I love (or don't love, or makes me think, etc), I MUST share that delight with her.
And you know why? Because then she will take that delight and add delights upon it. She will relate something she just read or has been thinking about, and that delight has now doubled. It has become fertilized and it's growing and spreading and for a week we mine and harvest from that first nugget of delight.
My other great friend, Jessica, has been taking an improv class, and she was telling us about the basic rules of improv: Whatever your teammate hands you, you accept and add onto it.
YES!, AND.
You are setting them up for success, they are setting you up for success.
This is being with Lisa. This is why after being together all day, all week, we will never run out of things to talk about.
Because we are always "Yes! and..."
New years day we ran to the top of Galbraith.
Along the way all the delights of the forest were amplified because Lisa sees things and makes them special.
We climbed and ran and our hearts beat and our blood pumped.
At the top we stood and gasped together. At the view. At our accomplishment.
I gave her Galbraith and she took it:
YES! AND...
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