Once upon a time I left everything that I knew in my life, my friends, my family, my state, and I moved to Goshen, Indiana to join a touring children’s theatre called Bridgework Theatre.
I was recently divorced. In fact, I moved all of my furniture and things out of my married abode the weekend before I flew to Indiana. It was my first time to really travel alone. My first time to be in one of those tiny little puddle jumper planes. My first time to be dumped into a pile of strangers from across the world and got paid to be an actor.
I have so many stories from that time in my life, so many memories and I think of them often. I laugh to myself and think “it’s a good damn thing I did that in my 20s…because no way could I live like that today.”
It was the best decision I had made in my life thus far. And remains one of the best ones to this day.
That band of crazy that I joined back in the fall of 1997 was revisited today when Mike, Abby and their trio of awesome Sophie, Sara and Charlie stopped in OKC on their family summer road trip and got to spend a little time with me. They stopped by my office and we had a fun little tour of the Girl Scout council. Sophie has 4 years of GS under her belt and sister Sara is hoping to start with a troop this year! We walked around and met friends and laughed and hugged and maybe tried to talk eleventy miles a minute. We had some present-giving because no one visits Aunt Misti and leaves empty handed, right? Girl Scout shirts and patches and tattoos and of course cookies were doled out and then just like that I had to finish work and they had to get back on the road. Their stop tonight is in KCMO to see another Bridgework cast member and visit him.
It’s funny how people come into your life and leave an imprint so deep that years can go by without anything but a social media comment here or there and still it feels as fresh as the first day. The three of us have seen each other face to face since our Indiana year, but even those visits have been years ago. Marriages have happened, movies have been made, careers have changed, children have been born and yet it felt just as fabulous and unexpected as it did one crazy halloween night many years ago with a mushroom pizza and Wallace & Grommet alarm clock.
More time. I want more time. These are people that are doing this life thing the right way. The kind of people you want to surround yourself with because they make you better.
I’m so grateful that at the end of this crazy week (thank you all so much for your prayers for my step-brother) an unexpected blast from the past reminded me of how great this life is.
Leap…and the net will appear.
And sometimes that net is chock full of these amazing friends that you get to keep.
*Friends by Bette Midler was the opening song in the first show Abby and I did for that theatre. We heard it six hundred and eleventyfivemillion times. But it still holds true.
Misti Ridiculous 
Co-sign all of this and that picture is maybe my favorite thing this week!
LikeLike