“Can you come in a few minutes early?  This was my eight o’clock text.  Not thinking too much about it, I hurried through my morning routine and headed out the door.

  “Let me know when you get here, and I will come down.”  I walked into the building and answered with a short text saying… ‘I’m here’.  Before I could put my stuff away Laura was walking thru my classroom door.  I can tell by the look on her face something was wrong.   “I had my mammogram and they saw something; they want me to come back for more tests”.  With a feeling of concern but also disbelief, I replied… ‘I’m sure it’s nothing’. 

   Looking at her, she looks healthy and strong.  She had no signs of being sick, but as she continued to talk, fear set in.

  ‘She’ is my co-worker, my boss of almost twenty years.  Her name is Laura.  We team teach a pre-kindergarten class together at a small pre-school.

We have been friends, but mainly co-workers for eighteen years.  We have watched each other’s families grow and have families of their own.

  There is a small group of us who have taught all these years together.  We consider ourselves friends and family.

  Although we have been close over the years, as close as co-workers can get, you could say our relationship took a different turn.  It happened the summer before Laura’s diagnosis.

  I, like most teachers have the summers off.  Laura works year-round as the Director of the Childcare program.  One summer afternoon she called me and asked me to come in to talk.  Laura wanted to share with me the breakup of her daughter’s engagement.  She called me, because I had just been through the same thing the summer before.  My daughter who had only been married eighteen months, separated then divorced.

Both girls were blindsided by their breakups, blindsided by life.  So, I understood.

 I had never shared any of my feelings about this time of my life, not with my co-workers, not with my friends.

No one knew what I was going through.  I didn’t open up and share the story until that day when Laura called me in.

Laura needed someone to confide in, and she knew I would be the one who could relate.

  I look back now and see that was a moment of deep understanding and trust that grew between us.

This work friendship of ours was taken to a different level.  I became someone she leaned on and trusted.  I had words of comfort and understanding.  I had been there.

  When I was young, I was the friend everyone talked to about their problems.  I’ve been told; I always have the right words to say.   As the years passed, I became more private.  I kept more to myself.  Not many people have seen my serious side.  I am only known to others as the one to laugh and have fun.

 I still think and wonder why all this happened the way it did.   I never expected to become the one Laura leaned on. 

All I know is it started that one summer day.