atlanta friends

When I graduated from college back in 1990, I floundered. I really had no set plan and no job that I was dying to get to. I lingered around East Tennessee not really knowing where else to go. My parents lived there at the time so it seemed to make sense to stay. My younger brother and several friends were still in the area. I got a job waiting tables at a really foofy restaurant and made more friends who made living there a really fun time. The best part about the restaurant was that my friends there were not cut from the same cloth as me. Meaning, they did not all grow up in the christian church like my fellow classmates at Milligan College. One of them was even someone I deemed famous as he played in a popular local band who I spent countless hours dancing the night away to when I should have been studying. We got to be good buddies and I even got to sing with him a couple of times in a local bar. Another friend lived in a fabulous old house and I spent much time with her because her hubby was in the merchant marines and not around a whole lot. There was a mom with 4 kids who worked nights, a chef who sat on a stool after all the work was done with his bud light in one hand and a handgun in the other, my boss (the chef's wife) who was a tiny, little firecracker of a woman who I think never sat down, the various high school workers and my favorite alternate lifestyle friend who had been with his partner for years. I worked there for about 8 months and had a blast. These people were kind of like the hospital people, yet had it a bit more together. I knew this wasn't going to be IT for me. Only a few of the waitstaff there looked at their job as a career. Most of us were just passing through. After a few months of being there, I was wooed to the lovely city of Atlanta. Over my summers traveling with an acapella singing group from my college, I met lots of wonderful people. Some of these people had families. Wives and kids. When I met their wives and kids I fell in love! They were living on the same street, houses and families connected. They ate dinner together, the kids played everyday and it seemed like a utopia to a newly graduated college kid. I found a house to rent, got a job and moved down. These friends of mine took me in and loved me to death. I ate with them, babysat their kids and we lived life together. My parents ended up moving down and several of my college friends as well. For about a year I joined my life with these people and they became my extra family. Life has bittersweet moments, however, and I ended my stay in their lovely community to follow a dream of adventure. I always planned to go back there though and I did a few years later with my husband and eldest son. My second child was born while living back in community with these people and life was bliss. When we decided to move north to be closer to blood family (my parents had since left Atlanta for jobs in Ohio) I was desperately sad. I recognized the need and want for our kids to know their grandparents, but I was heartbroken to leave my second family. I was determined not to break ties with these people with whom I had given my heart. We have lived in Ohio for 11 years and we come to Atlanta for Thanksgiving every year. Our friends come to us for New Years and we even go on a week vacation together in the spring. Somehow over the distance our bonds will not be broken! I never thought you could have this kind of community but it really can work. Now the kids I used to babysit are all either in college or in their upper years of high school. My kids have all befriended these children and it's fun to see them have a relationship that goes beyond the normal friendship kind of relationship. My kids really consider these guys their extended family and that is a wonderful thing to have. While I wish sometimes that there could be more, that we could live on the same street together again. I am content in knowing that they are in my life for good.