Friendship...

Dear son,

I was just speaking to my oldest and dearest friend, Keith. It's been years, I think, since I've spoken to him, and yet it was like hardly any time had passed at all. There was none of that awkwardness, that inchoate sense of discomfort that occurs sometimes when old friends discover their friendship hasn't followed them through the years, and I was very glad of it. It's the mark of true friendship, and true friendship is very rare. Unfortunately, he has bad tidings: he's getting divorced. It came as a very great shock to me, but apparently he and his wife had been unhappy for a long time. That makes me sad, but people come in and out of each other's lives all the time, and I suppose that's the nature of things. But consider yourself lucky when you find a friend who accepts you for who you are, and whom you can accept the same way. Good friends don't come along very often.

I love you.

--Dad