That's me on the left, and the lady on the right is Anne, the girl I shared various dorm rooms with for three years. When she emailed me to say she'd be in Wisconsin and wanted to stop by, I jumped at the chance.
How long had it been? Well, suffice it to say we hadn't seen each other in XY years, where XY is a two-digit number, X is a positive integer, and Y a nonnegative integer. Didn't I tell you there'd be math in this blog sooner or later? What's more, XY+4=XZ, where XZ represents the number of years we've actually been out of college.
Relax, you don't have to solve the equation. In fact, you can't. You finally get to fill in the little circle next to "not enough information" and get the problem right! Nor is the answer in the back of the book. Sorry. :)
Did we talk about college? Only a little. Mostly, we talked about now. About our families, about writing, about her job which I will describe in layman's terms as "keeping tabs" on fires in the Sierra Nevadas near King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. "I don't even remember that much about college," she said. So much life has happened since then, we don't understand the first thing about each other's jobs, we live half a continent apart, and we've never inhabited the present together, yet we talked about it easily. I learned that friendships picked up from a long-ago season of life aren't necessarily frozen in time.
She says we should come visit her in California, on her eight acres of land where she gardens, turns wood, and renovates her house. "It'll be really cheap once you get here," she told me. "And you can even get into the park free if you take me with you!" Maybe we will get to go. Hopefully it won't take XY years to get there.
3 comments:
It's interesting to reconnect with someone we've known from a past life.
I recently heard from a woman with whom I was good friends in high school. Double digits here, too---decades even! It was good to talk to her--to see where we've been and where we are--and to affirm that neither of us would EVER want to go back to those days.
I agree about not going back. Well, maybe I'd spend a day. But in general I'm one to look forward to what's ahead.
What a great opportunity to get together with an old friend. I totally got lost on all the math (Angela + math = scream) but it is always wonderful to visit people who we were connected to. I went to my ten-year reunion for high school about 7 years ago and it was a neat experience to see all those familiar faces again.
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