HAPPY BEST FRIENDS DAY! I have no idea where to even start. I’m sure that I could write an entire book about my best friend Shahidah and I. We were bless to have grandmothers who lived next door to each other and were also best friends. Our families were extremely close throughout our childhood as well as adulthood. I can remember as a child just walking right into Ms. Irene’s (Shahidah’s Grandmother) house just as she would walk right into mine (Ms. Ruby). As long as I can remember we’ve been best friends, granted that I am three years older than her I simply can’t remember Shahidah not being around. In fact she’s like my little sister as I am like her big sister. Plus we were the only child to our parents for a lovely while, longer for her so when my sister came along she was like an addition to the family than her sisters slowly came along and we just added them on to our crew.
It’s very rare now that you find friends who have been friends as long as we have. This year makes 41 years of friendship. That’s a long time to know someone without falling out, stabbing each other in the back or just outgrowing one another. We’re bless to have none of the above happen to us. I can still remember all the times her mom dragged us to Holiness churches (I guess that one reason why I love church) as well as our grandmothers dragging us literally to Connors Temple Baptist Church in Savannah. We traveled all over the United States with her dad who was a soft ball coach and the best mechanic on this earth. We spent Christmas together because her dad was muslim and they didn’t celebrate it at her house. We spent days at Lake Mayer and at Tybee Beach with my mom and dad, Larry. There are just so much that we shared, learned and experienced together. I even remember that she was the first person that I knew who had a computer, a Tandy 500. Yeah! We’re old! LOL!
Shahidah and I cried to get caboodles when they were first launched. We had those retro pastel cassette radios that we would play our dads old school music on. We were so innovative that we would take cassette tapes that JC Lewis Ford would have and place tissue in the holes on each corner so that we could record our favorite songs over them. Yeah! That was us! We were brownies and girl scouts together. She was a cheerleader and I was on the drill team. We both played an instrument in school. I played the flute and her the clarinet. Lord knows we’ve shared almost every memory together.
When we had our kids we were right there for one another. I remember when I was married to my first husband and having problems in our marriage she was always there. There isn’t a secret that I have that she doesn’t know and vice versa. I can recall at one point while living in Savannah I had no money to do laundry and no car. She was there for me to come to her house and do my laundry and gave me her car to drive to get from college to work. The times that she’s been there for me and me there for her are limitless. I can’t remember a time that we have gone long without talking to one another unless it was totally out of our control. She’s my sister. There’s really no other way to describe Shahidah.
It’s crazy because now that we’re adults we still talk to each other every day, spend time together as much as we can, our kids are growing up together thanks to technology and we’re both business owners. We also serve as one another’s accountability partner. It’s ok if one of us is having a bad day because we always manage to uplift each other. It’s a blessing to have someone in your life who can say that its literally been a LIFETIME. I rarely celebrate all of these crazy national holidays but I would be remise if I let today go by without saying HAPPY NATIONAL BEST FRIENDS DAY SHAHIDAH! I LOVE YOU TO LIFE BEST FRIEND. THE BEST IS YET TO COME FOR US.
