When I was five years old waiting for the first day of school to arrive, my dad found a little girl sitting on our front step crying.
She turned out to be a member of the new neighbour family and she was a little waif of a thing with black hair and dark brown eyes. I am a big blonde, blue eyed country girl and I was fascinated.
She and I couldn't have been more different if we tried, physically.
Over the years it proved that opposites attract and kindred spirits come in all shapes and sizes. When people saw us out in public we got a lot of stares because polar opposites - the blonde Amazon and the diminutive Asian beauty - were a sight to behold.
It quickly became an inside joke for my oldest friend Daisy and me. We would tease each other often. I hate to use the word oldest to describe my friend, because she's not literally my oldest friend but the longest running, like a great Broadway play, the getting-better-with-age, like a fine wine friendship. I would like to think of it as the best-worn friendship, the most consecutive years friendship, the Hall of Famer friendship, the Academy Award winning friendship. We've been friends for more than 40 years and that's saying something about what we have in common, like our tenacity, our never-give-up attitude and most days we are literally half a world away from each other. We haven't seen each other since my dad's memorial in 2004. We've kept our relationship fresh and enduring with old-time snail mail, e-mail, phone calls, and most recently Facebook status updates. What we also share is the sillies. Oh my, when we get together we laugh like the school girls we once were and if not for the long history of loving someone all your life, that alone would keep me coming back to my ever-smiling, light-infused friend. So here's to you, dear Daisy, one of your favourite songs because the stars really do shine for you. Here's Coldplay's Yellow at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNxeF4KMsY.
