You two are going to like each other a lot

I remember her as the wild kid in class, with hair that looked like seagulls had flocked in it, wearing op-shop taffeta ball gowns with desert boots to school. She was funny, impressive and a little intimidating, and I wanted to be her friend.

She tells me she remembers me as this wide-eyed, confident girly-girl, wearing green cords with pink sneakers, hand in the air at every class, and locked into a small knot of similar swots and smart-arses. She liked me a lot, but didn’t know how to get things started.

A wise and insightful teacher put us together, literally, with a most direct instruction: “You two are going to like each other a lot – you should be friends.” He got a lot of things right, that teacher. This has to be his most brilliant accomplishment.

My friend has been in my life since we were 14, and this relationship has been and remains one of the cornerstones of my life.

I’ve had cause to reflect on friendships and meaningful connections recently, and my conclusion is this: that, like great marriages, great relationships are not “work”, and you don’t need to “work” at them, as people will admonish you, as you do a difficult job. Instead, like the most beautiful trees, they need tending and support in the early years, emergency interventions in times of stress or drought, and then they need simply the care that love naturally brings to grow in glory, season in and out.

I know several people who have maintained close and long-standing friendships through their lives, through challenge and change, and I know those who have not: those have, either through what felt like necessity or sometimes even survival, either cut down such a relationship or simply walked away from it and started another, often in another country or circumstance, often more than once. A part of me admires their single-mindedness: I am tribal in a way that is possibly not always helpful.

But the profound qualities of those who hold that line of friendship through time are great ones, I believe – they seem to be empathy, compassion and an ability to forgive that always recommends them to me as real human beings. They are what the Yiddish call a mensch.

I’d like to think that my friend and I possess those fine qualities. We certainly have maintained the love that we have for each other, and that is a powerful thing.

In the past couple of weeks we experienced one of those serendipitous coincidences of time and circumstance that I suspect so many privately crave within the barely contained chaos of family, partner, work and life.

I had holidays, she had holidays, husband was away, no plans had been made and so there was just us and a whole bunch of time. We were giggling girlfriends again, with plenty of ice-cream, late nights, DVDs, heart-to-hearts and fits of hysterical laughter. We were on the lam and just us, and it has already become one of the most treasured and special times of my life.

It was time that we hadn’t had together since we were 18, between school and uni, and at liberty in a way we would never be again.

I farewelled her as she headed back to her city, thinking it’s time we will probably never spend together in that way again until we are in our 80s. But when we do, it will be as if we are 14 again, silly, high-spirited and hilarious. And feeling as safe as anyone could within the seclusion of a timeless friendship.

ABC Breakfast News presenter, Virginia Trioli has an established reputation as a radio host, television presenter, news reporter, features writer and columnist. In 1995 she won Australian journalism’s highest honour, the Walkley Award for her business reporting and in 2001 Virginia won a second Walkley for her interview with the former Defence Minister Peter Reith over the Children Overboard issue. For eight years she hosted the Drive Program on 774 ABC Melbourne, and the Morning Program on 702 ABC Sydney.

Visit Virginia’s Blog  here

Do you have a best friend? A timeless relationship?