Pocketful of Sunshine

We have friends in Pennsylvania (Rich & JoAnn and daughter Alyssa; Doug & Gina and twins Maria & Kristin) who we get to see two or three times a year and at the end of each too-short visit it strikes us yet again how very much we love them and how much we miss them because they are so damn far away.

They are truly wonderful, loving, kind, generous and the most fun-loving couples (and their kids) you'll ever meet. And because I can be selfish and as has been previously indicated have a capacity to hoard this is not an invitation for you to meet them because they are ours. As in not yours. And I'm not sharing. I digress.

Each year there is a summer song that all the men sing, screech, belch, bellow with great gusto (I swear it's not the amount of alcohol we consume together, although the argument could be made that that certainly increases the volume at which they sing). The thing that fills my heart with such joy it is near to bursting are the genuine smiles and happiness they just naturally exude from every pore.

Just being around them, laughing, remembering something funny that happened, the exuberant stories told around the campfire, the LOVE that soars through them is enough to dissipate a bad mood like a cloudy sky beneath a ray of bright warm sunshine.

All I have to do is close my eyes and I can feel their friendship and encouragement and support from many miles away. They may not realize it, but when days are long and hard they are my Pocketful of Sunshine and I treasure them for it.