Blood Brothers for Life

There are those special memories in your childhood that you never forget, no matter how young you were. I was three years old when Jason and I met and became best friends. Around 1967 or 68, somewhere around that time, I was on my front lawn of our house on Maxwell Street in San Antonio. I knew a family just moved into the house next-door and I thought that there was a boy my age in that family. I know you might be thinking that I making this all up, but there is someone who can vouch for it, Jason. On that day he came out of the house and we met for the first time. I asked him if he would like to be my best friend and he said, “yes”. It was that easy. At a young age we both sought after a friendship.

The friendship that Jason and I had as young boys was great. We were typical boys that looked at the whole world around us as “the wild west just waiting to be explored by two young warriors”. One summer day when we were probably around seven we were playing out in our yards (We were most likely climbing trees we weren’t suppose to climb, or was it the roofs too? That is a whole other story!) the two of us had a deep discussion as only seven-year-old boys can have. You might be surprised of how intelligent we were, we were impressed. On this particular day we were discussing our friendship. We knew that we had a special friendship and yet at age seven we both knew that one day our lives might be separated. What could we do in order that our friendship would last through the Vietnam War? After all we lived in south San Antonio around many military bases, the war was real to us. What if the military found out how intelligent we were and drafted us to be young officers? Like I said, in our minds we were highly intelligent. We always wanted to be best friends no matter what the distance was or the years that will pass. What was the solution?

Somewhere we read, wait we were only seven, ok we heard, something about how the Native Americans warriors became blood brothers by exchanging blood. That had to be the ultimate way of remaining best friends. Now I have never conducted any further research on this so please forgive our youthful ignorance on this topic, but at age seven it made sense to us. We decided WE would become blood brothers. I already had an older brother by birth, Jason had older sister but that was not the same in our somewhat innocent minds. How to exchange blood became a problem, but we were going to be brave though. After all, what is a little pain for a lifetime of friendship?

We were standing by the big old Ash Tree in Jason’s front yard, one of the trees we weren’t supposed to climb. We rubbed our wrists on the rough bark on that tree till blood come to the surface of our skin. At the first sight of that red liquid we placed our wrists together and made an oath that we would remain best friends forever. We were Blood Brothers.

In each of us we yearn for deep meaningful relationships. We desire to have a bond with people, friends that we can be transparent to, no masks involved. The deepest desires and dreams from our soul we want to share with someone. When we witness the beauty of a sunrise or the glory of the magical sunset, our hearts long to share those moments with someone that we have a special relationship with. It is a God given desire I believe; God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. Not only do we desire that special relationship with that special person of the opposite gender, but also we desire deep meaningful relationships with those of our own gender. David had Jonathon, Jesus had his apostles, Batman had Robin and after 37 years Jason and I are still best friends.

Our lives led us to be separated for many miles for many years and now we just live just minutes apart. My two sons love it when the four of us are together (especially when we start up Jason’s 1970 Mustang Fastback in his garage…we love it…Jason’s wife doesn’t care too much for it I don’t think, but she tolerates us boys, she’s great.) The two of us reminisce of our childhood like it was just yesterday. We will laugh as we talk about the troubles we made for our poor parents; I am being repaid though with my own kids now. We also are in wonderment of how unique of a friendship we continue to have. Something special happened on that day we became Blood Brothers, it wasn’t a magical potion or some secret oath, it was a gift realizing that God gave each of us, the gift of relationships.

We are given those gifts even as we grow older with each sunset, what we do with the gifts is our choice. Do we push those gifts aside afraid to open them because of past wounds that occurred with previous gifts? Do we put the gifts on a shelf unopened because we feel that we are unworthy of them? Or, do we open each gift with the realization that with it comes that completeness of our souls for relationships as they are designed to be.

Thank you Father for your gifts. For those relationships that we have had in our past that enriched our lives, we give you thanks. For those relationships that you have given us in the present we give you thanks. For the relationships that have lasted our lifetime we give you thanks and for those gifts that you will bless us with in the future we give you thanks.