When a Mission Becomes High Priority

           

            Just when I was feeling irreconcilably hurt by a friend’s priorities (which didn’t include reading one of my few published short stories or accepting an invitation I’d extended or responding to the texted birthday greeting “Happy Birthday!  Am in Atlanta.  Aunt died.”), she surprised me by putting something else high on her list:  A visit to check on two elderly relatives who live in Tacoma Washington—relatives I love but worriy about whenever they, great communicators, don’t communicate.  I had mentioned this mission earlier, but it was only this morning that I wrote to another friend, the friend who was traveling with her and whom I still considered a friend.  To avoid continued clumsiness, the clumsiness brought on by adjective clauses, I’ll give these friends names:  Ella—the one who hadn’t hurt me irretrievably-- and Essa—the one who had. 

            Ella was the one I still considered a friend and a kind human being.  She had responded to my short story and even said nice things about it, and as anyone who writes knows, we are extrememly grateful when anyone is willing to read what we’ve written, and when they’re willing to say something nice about it, we are friends for life.    So this morning I wrote to Ella asking whether she could look up my relatives Bee and Emma  just in case she and Essa had the chance to stop by Tacoma, Washington on their way to Vancouver, where they were traveling together.   I gave Ella their address.  I didn’t have their telephone number, which I hoped to get if this mission could be carried out.  I didn’t get a response from Ella and figured that she wouldn’t even get my request until it was too late to make this house call, which probably needed more planning.

            Then, as I was planning a reading for a friend whose published stories are not as rare as mine, my cell phone rang, and it was Essa, saying that she and Ella were in the home of my beloved relatives, and she was about to put Bee, my mother’s 94-year-old cousin, on the line.   I got to talk to him and to his wife, Emma, who together write the best Christmas letter I get every year:  Two people facing old age and serious health problems who still express the joy they feel being connected to friends and families and give supporting details!  They are the people who best illustrate the adage about how happiness comes not from our circumstances, but from within. 

            My friends had carried out the mission, and the one putting my old cousins on the phone was the one from whom I’d decided nothing good could ever come again.   How quickly resentment melts away when priorities are re-appraised, and I very quickly reappraised hers!  Along with Ella, Emma had gotten the directions to my cousins’ home and found the way there to reassure me that they were all right and to get me the information I needed—phone numbers, their grandson’s contact information—to check on them in the future. 

            Carrying out a mission like that shows good priorities, the kind I’m reassured to find in a person who appears to be a friend after all!  Happiness may come from within, but circumstances sometimes nourish what lies within!