Old Friends Are The Fountain of Youth

Chatting with an online friend the other day, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one to carry a photo of myself in my head that seems to be permanently set on what I looked like at seventeen.

Looking in the mirror is always a shock.  Who is that person looking back at me?  In my head, my hair  is long and shiny, my skin smooth and creamy, body lithe and streamlined.  I am seventeen, never changing.

In reality, those days are long gone.  For every gray hair that I pluck, ten more sprout back.  The milk & cream complexion is now riddled with brown age spots.  And the body, well, let’s just say, it’s a lot more rounded than it used to be.

Perhaps that’s another reason why old friends, the ones that were your inseparable companions in the teen years and who have stuck with you through the years, are so precious.  Old friends are the fountain of youth.

They still see you the way you see yourself, reminding you of when the world was endless possibility, and you had the ability to go anywhere and do anything.  If you’re lucky, they also send you reminders.

One of my oldest friends just gave me Time Gone, written and illustrated by Lynda Wesley McLaughlin, a long time resident of St. Thomas, USVI, out home town.  We have a tradition of exchanging picture books since we both collect illustrated children’s books, and all the books that she gives me are special, but this one…

She come see me a day and we talk melee.  She was gon’ bring me some mangoes, but time gone and I don’t see she again…

This book touched my heart, stirring up memories of “time gone” when we lived on a small  island surrounded by people who know you. 

Everyone knew your business, sharing melee (gossip) was an inescapable hazard of small island life, but I loved that you couldn’t walk down Main Street without being “hailed up” by friends.

Most of my high school friends have left the island.  We go back home when we can, but the island has changed and so have we.

Our little island has grown up over the years.  There’s a Home Depot and a Cost U Less serving a rapidly growing population.  When I walk down Main Street these days, I’m more likely to be taken for a tourist and asked, “Back to the ship?”

Still, when I’m there with my old friend, we fall back on the old pastimes – picking fruits, exploring the ocean, devouring books.  And we’re still seventeen forever.

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