"Come Saturday morning...."

"...Come Saturday morning
I'm goin' away with my friend
We'll Saturday-laugh
more than half of the day
Just I and my friend
Dressed up in our rings
and our Saturday things
And then we'll move on
But we will remember
long after Saturday's gone
Come Saturday morning..."
- Dory Previn

It hasn't always been on a Saturday, but we have always 'dressed up in our rings and Saturday things," when we've "Saturday-spent till the end of the day."  I don't even know how it began, but now I can't imagine a summer without "going away with my friend."

My friend and I have traveled for miles together in tear and triumph...in storm and in shine.  She is the golden thread that runs through the rich tapestry of my life.  She is my constant.  She is the friend who knows my heart's deepest pain...and its greatest joy.  She shares my secrets and she knows my truth.  She knows the song that will play when I am scattered over a high meadow and  join the wind singing through the aspen.  She has felt my heartbreak as if it were her own, and she has shared her joy with me as if she were breaking bread.

There have been many winters when looking forward to "just goin' away with my friend," was enough of a reason to put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other through the gray days of January and February. Even my daughters would get excited about summer finally arriving, and we'd be back in "the valley," where mom would finally get to laugh hard with her friend under a clear Colorado sky.  They knew that our daylong conversation on a shared day-off would be like cool water to a parched traveler.

This one day retreat has been going on for over twenty years.  And although in the early days of our friendship, we made great plans for how we would spend that treasured one day off together, each year more and more of the "plan" fell away, until all that is now left is what is essential...the conversation.  It no longer matters if we drive over the Continental Divide to Aspen, or stay in town and hunker down at a table in the garden at Mothers' Bistro...as long as we talk and laugh and talk and cry....and talk.

We have walked "through the valley of the shadow of death" together, I've danced at her daughter's wedding...a daughter I couldn't love more if she were my own, and we've held eachother's toes to the fire at times when a lesser friendship might have capitulated to the ease of sympathy.

I don't remember how we found eachother, or when we started making our pilgrimage each summer.  I can't recall why we became friends, or who introduced us.   I only know that she is the person whose heart holds my secrets safe, and whose dreams I cherish as much as my own.

Mary Baker Eddy says in her own autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection:

"There are no greater miracles known to earth
than perfection and an unbroken friendship."

When I think of all the things she could have cited...healing, resurrection, motherhood, courage, success...I am humbled to have even one unbroken friendship. 

My dear, sweet, wonderful friend is one of God's most precious gifts ...her friendship is a miracle.  Spending time with her for one special day each year is a gift carved out of time and space, together we fill it with words and tears and laughter. 

"Come Saturday morning
I'm goin' away with my friend
We'll Saturday-spend
till the end of the day

Just I and my friend
We'll travel for miles
in our Saturday smiles
And then we'll move on
But we will remember
long after Saturday's gone
Come Saturday morning
Come Saturday morning..."
"Come Saturday Morning"
-performed by The Sandpipers

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS