Friendships, French Press, Pen + Paper

Last week, I broke my coffee maker carafe. Again. I’m talented like that. Luckily, I had a lovely French press that my dear friend, whom we’ll call Agatha, gave to me the last time I broke the coffee carafe. It’s beautiful and an almost-Tiffany blue, which is my favorite color in the whole world. It was SO thoughtful of her. Now, each morning when I make myself a cup of coffee, I think of her and how incredibly lucky I am to have her as a friend.

{French Press of Friendship}

Agatha and I go way back. We met in middle school, and there are some days when I think there couldn’t be two women more different from each other in the whole world: she’s a beautiful cheerful blond with sparkling blue eyes… I’m a short, sarcastic Filipino with dark hair. She’s a healthy triathlete… and I’m a certified channel-changing bacon-&-beer lover. Her kind words are like butterflies dancing across paper … and I swear like a sailor. She was talking about the Eagles once when Nine Inch Nails was playing in my head. We both, however, liked to write, listened to Billy Joel and watched/read Anne of Green Gables.

Through differences, distance and time we’ve remained friends. I credit that mostly to her incredible thoughtfullness & forgiveness. She’s truly one of the most amazing people I have ever been lucky enough to meet.

So when I sat down to pour my second cup of coffee from the French press she gave me, I wrote her a little note and mailed it. You know, pen and paper? Envelopes and stamps? Those old school tools are still used on a daily basis by old school me.

Then if timing would have it, the next day I received a Facebook invitation to join the Write a Letter & Send It In The Mail event for July 9th. I LOVE the premise of this. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mails…they’re all wonderful, but I truly believe that there’s nothing better in conveying how you truly feel than good ol’ pen to paper.

I may not be the best friend in the world. I’m awkward and clunky and weird. I’ve been known to say the wrong thing at the worst time. So it’s important to me that the people I love know how much I love them, how much they mean to me and how much they shape my life. It’s important to me that Agatha knows how much her friendship means to me, and even if I will honestly never be as thoughtful as she is and as she was in giving me this French Press out of the blue when I needed it. What I can do is what I’ve been doing and loving doing since I was four: I can write. Sometimes it’s the most I can give, sometimes it’s all I know how to give, and I am thankful and lucky to have friends who somehow love me for it/despite it.

Share how much someone means to you today, on July 9th, and everyday. Put down the iPhone, and pick up the pen and paper.

Tags: friends, letters, notes, writing