Friendship and an old green cupboard

I baked a pie for my friend Carol today.  Carol lost one of her dearest friends yesterday morning,
 Valerie Wakeley.  I knew Valerie from both the antiquing world and from her son Sean who is friends with my Step brother Andrew.  But of all the different ways I knew Valerie I remember her most because of her Old Green Cupboard.  You see, a few years back Valerie was kind enough to allow us to tie our boat up to her dock for the summer.  We could come and go as we pleased and enjoy her dock for swimming too.  I would always look up at her closed-in porch while walking down to the water to admire her decor.  She had so many antique treasures!  I loved her old 50's Bounce yard chairs with just the right amount of patina.  She had neat old ladders and tables and wash basins filled with flowers.  My kind of decorating!  But on the Porch was a giant old green cupboard. The kind of cupboard that told a story.  It was big and had it's paint chipping away.  A favorite piece of hers as well.  She said she had found it years ago but never knew what to do with it so she just stored it on the porch until something right came along.  That was in 2006.  I wonder if she ever found the "something right"  I pictured her filling it with quilts in a living room, or jams in the kitchen when she had moved from the lake house.  I saw her every once in awhile at the Farmers' Market and different Estates sales around town.  We would talk small talk, I was always in a hurry for something so it was just the basic conversation and one of us was on our way.  I would think to myself every time "I wonder if she ever found a purpose for her old green cupboard". 

Valerie's Lake House.

I thought that very thing today as I was baking The Pie.  How I wish I would have taken the time during one of my many opportunities to ask Valerie, not just about the cupboard...but about the life around it... around her.  She was after all a friend, one who found beauty in old things like I do, one who treasured a piece of junk someone else casted aside.  A kindred spirit.  I wish I had embraced that more.  So as I delivered the pie to Carols' I decided then and there to learn from this.  To inquire more, to cultivate friendships when they come my way.  To cherish those who come into my life.  Like an old cupboard that needs valued and adored...so do those we love.  And I hugged My friend tight...