Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I have been able to contribute to this forum. Last year was one of many great changes in my life (professionally) and that directly affected my time and committment to my other loves and interests. My new job comes with a great deal of responsibilities and expectations. I threw myself into this new career venture 100% in order to prove myself to a new boss, and proudly took on the leadership role given to me by the powers that be.
Not only was ‘I’ in a new job, by wonderful partner (of 15 years) also made a career move at the same time, which not only changed our personal schedules, by dramatically altered our free time with each other and our commitments to our church, family and friends. While we are both pleased with our new jobs we found that as the holidays came and went we were constantly fine tuning calendars and communications… almost to the point, that our standard means of exchanging information became memos and frequent calendar print outs of each other’s itineraries. This month my devoted beau is doing a great deal of travelling (related to his work), while I finally have a few moments to ‘exhale’ for a bit.
While JD was away on his most recent business excursion, I had some time to arrange a ‘boys night out’ with five of my oldest and dearest friends. (We have known each other and kept in regular contact for the past three decades). We get together twice a year…once with our respective partners, wives and families…and once with just the boys. Last night was just for the boys.
It was a sheer delight from the beginning to the end of the evening. I arrived at the home of one of the five, that was hosting the evening. (We all contribute to the gathering with a dish and/or beverages). I came in, and dropped of my dish in the kitchen, and was the second of the five to arrive. There were the customary hugs of hello and we immediately launched into our regular patter of chit-chat for the evening. The last two arrived shortly after me and our circle was complete.
During the course of the evening with cocktails, small plates of appetizers, all the way to dinner and dessert, the conversation never lagged. We caught up, with every issue on the planet, starting with the acknowledgement of the absent spouses and children (for those of us with kids), and seamlessly sequed to religion, politics, gay and straight relationships…and for a brief moment while one of the other guys was sharing his most recent happening, I went into my head for a moment and thought….
How incredibly blessed I am to have this powerful circle of men in my life! Gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, African-American, Puerto Rican, business owners, business partners, husbands, fathers, sons…Brothers! Brothers all! And we …we ‘choose’ each other’s company. We pick up from where we left off each time we see one another. We share our dreams, talk about our fears and laugh until we cry over so many memories.
I think many of you are familiar with the expression, “We don’t choose our families…” Well, that may need some modifying, for I have chosen this brotherhood of men to be part of my family and knowing them is one of the greatest successes in my life. I hope the year ahead and life in general brings you such success.
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