Thank you, Teacher Julie, for the friendship award you gave me. I feel honored and privileged. I hasten, however, to make a distinction between an online friendship and a virtual friendship, because while the latter is acceptable in form when it comes to computer jargon, it also connotes something that is “existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name.”

We have not always been friends, not in the conventional manner of friends who chat on the phone or see each other for coffee or go shopping or gab for hours. We lost track of each other for a long time, true, but I’ve always believed that time and distance were mere inconveniences to true friends. You were Alex’s first teacher, the one he looked up to with adoring eyes, the one whose word was law, and the one who helped me cope with two precocious boys in the first year of Alphonse’s diagnosis. For all the things you were to me and to Alex then, and for all the things you are to me now, you are and will always be a friend.

Friendship awards are no fun unless they’re passed on to loved ones, and this I willingly pass on to

Leirs  (Can you imagine we’ve never met in person but we’re really good friends? I am also honored to be her daughter Adrianne’s baptismal godmother. ) 

Susan  (She is a complete package - beauty of face and beauty of heart. And though I know of her only through her blog and her book, I will always consider her a friend.) 

NinJas & Joe (The exasperating peas that complete my sisters pod, whether I want them to or not)

Megamom  (We lost a lot of years, Megamom, but we’re making up for lost time. Thank you for the renewed friendship)

Teacher Julie  (No, I am not giving you back your gift but I sure hope you don’t mind that I give you the same gift.)