Old Friends are Like Onions

Old friends are like onions. Many of us have cut open onions and marveled at the layers. The thin skin. Its not really possible to have thick skin with old friends, that is something we try to pretend to have with the people we recently meet.  Sometimes a green shoot is forming in the middle starting to re grow, or keep growing. 
Old friends are like the land stewards who grow onions. Old friends know that an onion starts as a tiny seed, and shoots up green. They understand "you" as a being, that started growing and adding layers to yourself. They understand having the green parts of  your life clipped off, and used periodically through out your growing season as sustenance.
The best part of old friends is that they are able to see all the layers that have grown on the outside, but they know what the core of "you" looks like. Old friend speak to the part of you that is beyond all the layers. They know that skin is really thin.
Onions add flavor to everything. They are spicy and tangy in salad. When the winter is over and the first salads come out of the garden,  onions are chopped up raw, often resulting in tears. The onion salad refreshes weariness, opens your eyes, invigorates, and charges the spirit. Like running into old friends on the street or in your home town.
Onions make the base for slow cooked stew. Slow cooking takes time, drawing the subtle juices out of the meat, and veggies. The flavor is one that whole is greater than the sum of its parts, like sound harmonics of different frequencies vibrating, to give us sweet music and symphony. The carrots, potatoes, and onions each play their part to perfection with old friend onion holding down the root note.
Onions speak for them selves. And the words we use for old friends fall short because we cant really explain them. They speak for themselves.