A day in the snow with Lola
I've known Lola for as long as I can remember - our mums were friends when they were pregnant with us, we went to preschool together, then I moved houses & we ended up going to different schools. It was devastating at first, she was my very best friend & I knew no one at my new school, but we promised each other we would write each other letters every single day & believe it or not we actually did, for YEARS.
We had this (very elaborate) system where we would each write something every day, on a big sheet of paper & send it to the other at the end of the week. I have boxes full of letters still to this day! I will keep them & cherish them forever, reading them now they are just plain hilarious..talking about our daily lives at school & boys of course (at that age we hated 'most' of them, oh the drama!..actually that hasn't changed has it?!) Then life goes on, we went to college, we stopped writing each other letters at that stage, but we were always in touch, we visited each other quite regularly, & we still are 22 years later!
I'm so grateful for friendships like this, whenever we see each other even if we've been living in different countries for years & didn't quite catch up as often as we'd liked, it's like nothing changed at all. Those friendships are rare, I know it..
Last weekend, on a sunny morning Lola called the house asking if I'd like to come with her up to her parent's farm in the mountains. I grabbed my warmest socks, mountain shoes & headed out in a matter of minutes. She picked me up in her 'safari Jeep' as I like to call it. We took Hector with us, & off we drove up to the snowy Pyrenees.
I hadn't seen her parents for 9 years!! They welcomed me with open arms, we caught up on each other's lives, eating chocolate cake that Lola had prepared that same morning. Lola's dad was desperately trying to melt some of snow in front of the house, they had to dig a trench to access the front door! We quickly ran into the sheepfold to see the lambs & tiny border collie puppies! We snuggled all of them before heading out again to enjoy the snow before the sun would set behind the mountain tops.
It was a very special day, it brought back so many childhood memories when we would play for endless hours at the farm, in the stacks of hay. I've already planned to visit once more before the new year...
