The most important "things"

Alice, me, and King, at Irish Ridge Ranch.  1975.

I am always tickled when my attention is directed to a very old photo of me with a friend.  Whether the friend is human or fur-person, it's always a sweet surprise and reminder.

My long-time friend, Alice, became my friend when we were both lonely kids in our class at parochial school.  I know I was seven when I first met Alice--soon to be eight, it was third grade--and our teacher, Madame Minot, put us together because I was the new kid, and Alice (I suspect) just ended up the odd kid out that day.  But, it was a gift of inspiration that was to become a life-long blessing.  Thank you, Madame Minot.

Today, Alice happened to be re-posting blurry copies of our horse-days.  Maybe, come to think of it, it was that Mrs. Minot somehow knew we were both horse-crazy little girls.  Anyway, we most certainly were!  Alice's posts are of ever-dwindling photographic quality (she keeps recopying them over and over, it appears) and yet, they are so incredibly heart-warming every time she does this.

The photos spanned years from the first times I knew her through our 20th year--about 12 years of young lives together.  I can't stop smiling.  The world keeps spinning on its crazy axis; dread and bile spinning off heated conversations, and I am pleasantly in my bubble of memories.

Fixero with Alice, as a young gelding, 1975-ish

Fixero, left to his own devices for six years after the previous photo was snapped.  1981.

Though most of the pictures were of Alice and animals, or both of us and animals, I am reminded of so many other memories; and also so many other people.  My horse Fixero, whom I bought from Alice's mother Olga, was also a horse that my friends Justine (ne, Melissa) and her brother Scott, who were my next door neighbors, met when I brought him home to my little rental in South Palo Alto to give him a bath and rid him of the hundreds of ticks the day I purchased him.  That was the late summer of 1981, when I bought Fixero, and probably winter 1975 when Alice was riding him.  Justine and Scott are still friends to this day.  In Alice's photo, she was riding a younger Fixero, on their ranch in Half Moon Bay.  A ranch I, myself, later occupied when Alice's family had moved.

Me, on the left, on Gypsy, Olga in the middle, and Alice, on Butchy.

A picture of us on my first two horses, Gypsy and Butchy (pre-dating the first horse Alice acquired) with Alice's mom, Olga, smiling in front of their Portola Valley house in about 1973.  Their Chevelle Super Sport is in the background, still in it's factory forest green, prior to the later orange paint job they put on it.

Me, holding Alice's dog Fuzzy, and Alice, kneeling with Buttercup the goat and Emily the sheep.  Unnamed doggie in foreground.

Then, Alice and me on two other horses, her gigantic horse King, (one of the best horses that ever lived) and me on my tiny pony, Apache.  This was at the ranch again, in front of the gigantic red barn that 250-acre property housed.  And the year was 1975.  Another photo was us with all the dogs and the lamb and the goat, taken on a stroll down the road upon which only a few people actually lived (back then) in spite of the fact that it was about seven miles long.  Lobitos Creek Road.  And their address?  1.  1 Lobitos Creek Road.  I always thought that was incredibly cool.

Another photo of Alice and me in the back yard of the home my family moved to when I started 9th grade.  Our Palo Alto home.  Alice and I, and my first doggy, Tina, in a tete-a-tete alongside Matadero Creek, in our back yard.  As I gazed at that photo, I knew that the afternoon that photo was taken, Alice's tow truck was parked outside in the court, and I had gone with her on a ride-along that would lead to my first career.

Daydreaming about where we were that summer that we sat alongside the creek, I remember that summer I was also getting to know my sweet friend Tina; another person I am still blessed to be connected with.  Such memories fill me with appreciation for the love these people show me.  How lucky I am to be able to call them friends of so many decades.

Alice, me, Gypsy, and Butchy.

I was remarking about how much "not-great" stuff has affected our lives in the two or so decades since the internet was widely adopted.  But, the same overarching ether is also the biggest reason I was able to reconnect or keep connected with some of these people who are so precious to me.

Me, Alice, and baby Heidi, who is now grown, married, and has her own twin girls.  January, 1986-ish.

This last one, I share on Alice's behalf.  I'm not sure she has it.  This is after a long time apart--about four or five years.  Alice had moved to Florida, gotten married, and had a brand new baby.  This photo says it all.  Can you see it?  Can you see the happiness?  The connectedness of two life-long friends?  We were laughing and giggling as though she'd never moved, and we were just having our usual morning coffee together.