Mornings with Anna

One of my closest friends comes in the form of a middle aged, ex-chainsmoker, free spirited woman from Florida with whom I work with.

Her name is 'Anna.'

I lovingly call her 'Duh.'

Long story. I'll get to it later.

Anna is one of those rare types of people whom everyone loves. She can talk to little kids, old people and everyone in between and have their respect and admiration. She's a socialite and absolutely wonderful. I swear on my life we share the same soul. If there is a such thing as reincarnation the same person got transformed into two different bodies in consecutive generations, mine and hers.

The similarities are amazing: we both started working at nursing homes as teenagers. She has a very distant brother that she doesn't know very well, as do I with a brother in So Cal. She recently became an aunt for the first time. Her beautiful nephew is turning a year old soon. My niece was born almost four months ago. We both prefer the road over the air and so on and so forth.

Anna has no kids of her own, well other than the 3-5 of us twentysomethings at work who she works with on a regular basis. After so long she gradually claimed us as her kids the way a teacher might at school. Not that we mind of course.

She tells me regularly that she loves me. And I say it right back.

I love getting to work early and spending a few minutes chatting to her before having to start my shift. Morning shifts are always harder for me because despite the fact that I don't sleep much I don't consider myself a 'morning person.' I deal with the public. Morning person or not, I still have to talk to people.

Anna makes it a bit easier by cheering me up usually with some short, witty remark about my appearance or some crazy story from her childhood. Like my uncle's stories some of hers seem so farfetched that you almost don't believe them, but your inner child wants to.

Which is another thing about Anna . . . her ability to be so childlike. Don't confuse that with being 'childish,' because childish she's not. She has this . . . innocence about her. At first encounter you almost believe she lives in her own world. She has a tendency to romanticize things like I do, which I love because I've never met another person like that. She makes the simplest things seem like the biggest adventures. And she tells me about the places she's been and the road trips she's taken and all the while I'm mesmerized. By the end of the conversation I'm itching to go there and experience it for myself.

Anna just 'gets' me. She's the only one who ever understood why I had to wrap my mother's Christmas present three times last year (don't ask). She feeds me. How can I not love a person who feeds me? And she does it with healthy food: grapes, crackers, small amounts of cookies. She buys me my choice of drugs: Coke {soda, mind you}.

And on a bigger scale she simply takes the time to listen to me. I probably never told her as I've often as I've told another close friend of mine, but she has an elephant's memory, meaning she remembers everything I tell her. She knows about my family, where I've lived, my views on things at work and everything else.

In general she cares about me. And she doesn't have to. Sure, it makes work a LOT easier but we could have been just 'civil' towards one another like we are with other people, but she's not.




I cherish my mornings with her. She's my cup of coffee.


Random thought of the day: No more favors please!