Let's Send Fruit Baskets

I haven't been around much this week as I took a few days off to spend time with one of my oldest friends, "L," and her 17-year-old daughter ("S"), who were visiting from Massachusetts.

L and I met in our freshman year of college in the chemistry lab. We were both biology majors at the time and of course chemistry was one of our required subjects. After a few days next to each other in the chem lab mixing up smelly chemicals and causing minor explosions and fires in our immediate area, we were fast friends, and have remained so ever since.
We both hung around with different crowds during college - L started out as a commuter, while I was in the dorm, so we had different groups of friends. Later she did move on campus but was never in the same dorm as I was. But in between all of the craziness we always met up - either in the dining hall, or the cafeteria at the school, or in one of our rooms - and talked about everything under the sun and commiserated about our various problems and traumas.

Thanks to L, I actually managed to get to one Boston Red Sox game, visited the Arnold Arboretum, and went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, none of which I would have gotten around to doing without her influence.
The other friends I hung around with at the time were more apt to drag me out to a bar than to a museum.

Funny thing is, I am not in touch with any of those friends, but L and I have remained close ever since.

Through the years we visited with each other's families, and had rendez-vous in various locations, ranging from Cape Cod to New Jersey. When I met DH and was deep in relationship angst, her mom was the one who said "hold on to him, he's a good one," and I listened.

When L met her husband, they visited us before they were even married and we all got along as if we'd known each other forever. And once they had their daughters, we were part of their lives as well.

Now we're still sharing the joys and commiserating over the hard parts of life - we both have aging parents and are facing the daily challenges that that entails. But through it all we have had each other and that is what is great about a friendship like this. No matter how long it's been between visits, the moment we are together it is as if no time has passed.

So it was great to spend a few days of quality time with L and her older daughter S, as so often our get-togethers have been too brief or full of activities without enough time to really talk.

S is a charming, witty girl who really is fun to be with. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging around with a 17-year-old and understanding her perspective on things. Do you realize she is so young she only barely remembers cassette tapes? And she's never known a world without cell phones? And did you know, if you're 17 and are still in school, you can actually explain how a simultaneous equation is solved in Algebra? (This is something I have never mastered). She also seems to have inherited both of her parents' sense of humor.

We even had time to sit out on our deck and talk about yours and my favorite topic, politics. L has way too many things on her plate to get that involved in the whole subject as a rule, but we did talk about the Iraq war.

Her view was that although we never should have gone there in the first place, she doesn't see how on earth we can extricate ourselves without leaving it in such a huge, dangerous mess that it can never be fixed.

I agreed, and then S chimed in with her opinion and it was great. Her solution to the mess? Send fruit baskets!

"You know how when you've done something, and you're really, really sorry about it? And you want to apologize? You send a fruit basket! Maybe we should just ship all of the Iraquis fruit baskets! Then they'd have something to eat and wouldn't hate us so much!"

Naturally she was kidding.

But you know what? There are probably worse ideas out there!

Speaking of ideas, I wonder whether it's a good or bad idea that Obama has settled on an agreement with Hillary Clinton to have her name placed in nomination at the Democratic convention? As a result, delegates will be declaring themselves for Hillary Clinton during the roll call. Of course, when Hillary herself votes she will then declare her support for Obama and ask her delegates to support him.

But this might backfire and make it look as if the party is divided. I am also more than a little concerned about having both Hillary AND Bill speaking at the convention, given Bill's lukewarm (or perhaps I should say, rather chilly) support for Obama.

I understand that Obama wanted to come to an agreement with Clinton's supporters before the convention to soothe their feelings and make them feel validated.

But maybe it would be better to just send them fruit baskets.

One More Day

Yes, NaBloPoMo is almost over. And I have to say it has been a great experience to blog every day; I was surprised I was able to find something to say almost every time.

Except tonight.

Yep, tonight I got nothing. Sorry about that.

I had a lot of work to do today so I left work rather burned out to go meet friends for dinner - the same friends I dined with at the Lebanese restaurant on the infamous evening of the camel milk. This time we met at an Italian restaurant that two of us hadn't been to before, and we started out sitting in the bar and ordering appetizers and ended up eating in the bar at a table rather than in the restaurant itself. We had a great time, laughing and talking, and sat there for a good three hours.

So by the time I got home I had no energy to write an insightful post, a humorous post, or even an intelligent post. So you got this instead.

I meandered (as is my wont; I didn't name this blog Meanderings for nothing) around some of the other blogs, putting off the moment of truth, and now here I am with time running out. Nothing has come to me.

But, as Nick said before, it still counts if it's in haiku, so I will end with one!

Great Italian food
Men at the bar watching sports
Why are they so loud?

Party!!!

The Bat Mitzvah celebration went off without a hitch. The ceremony was held in the same temple we were in three years ago for my friend's older daughter's Bat Mitzvah. It's a beautiful space - modern, with skylights and huge windows that flood the sanctuary with light. And since it was a beautiful fall day, the bright blue sky and colorful leaves were lovely to look at. I'm sure when they scheduled this for November 17 no one would have expected the leaves to still be on the trees on that day.

I had a moment of panic before we left the hotel - I had a Wardrobe Malfunction. I had brought a plain black dress to wear, and had packed two pair of pantyhose in case one of them was too small or had a run in the leg. So when it was time to get ready, I started to attempt to don the first pair. Mind you, I don't wear pantyhose often. I probably hadn't had any on since last December for DH's company holiday party. Plus I have gained, perhaps, a few pounds...

So I struggled and tugged and pulled as I tried to yank the offending garment onto my body. I finally got to the top part and as I was tugging on the waistband I realized the things were disintegrating in my hands. The rubbery part of the stretch fabric was detaching in little sticky pills onto my fingers! Apparently the elastic part doesn't last forever.

So I ripped them off and said to myself "Thank goodness I brought another pair!" I started putting them on, and after the first leg was on I was feeling confident. Not only were they not falling apart but they fit better too. Then I started pulling on the other leg. Uh-oh. A small run was starting in the foot. I kept pulling them on. That was when I realized there were four or five small holes in the left leg! I was obviously not meant to wear pantyhose to this affair. I was out of options! Unless I wanted to go bare-legged in 35-degree November weather, the dress was out.

Luckily I had also brought a dressy pant suit with me, so, in a last-minute wardrobe switch, I put that on instead. I still wore the uncomfortable dressy shoes. As it turned out, I fit right in, as there were a number of other women similarly attired.

The party itself was a lot of fun. The girls were arrayed in a rainbow of party dresses, all teetering on their newly acquired high heels. The dresses ranged from taffeta with ruffles to black cocktail dresses worthy of a 30-year-old. But whichever style they were, most of them sported spaghetti straps or were strapless altogether. The boys, gawky and uncomfortable in their dress suits, soon ripped off their ties and untucked their shirttails to party in comfort.

The DJ got all the kids up on the dance floor for a hula-hoop contest, followed by various other games and dances. The high heels came off and the little sophisticates were soon running around like the 12 and 13-year-old children they are.

Toward the end of the afternoon, two of the Bat Mitzvah girl's best friends presented a skillfully done PowerPoint photo collage, accompanied by music, that they had put together themselves. All of these kids have grown up together, living next door to one another, and it was a lot of fun to see these children's pictures over the past 13 years, and watch how they had grown and matured.

It's strange to think how 13 years ago for us is such a short time; 13 years ago I was living where I live now, working where I work now. Yes, there have been some new developments in my life since then, but basically I was a grown-up then and I'm a grown-up now. But 13 years is my friend's daughter's whole lifetime.

It was especially poignant to contemplate this as I looked around the room. I've felt a part of this family ever since my friend and I met in freshman year chemistry lab in college, so I knew a lot of the people in the room. I've been seeing some of them off and on for 35 years. So I've seen the children grow up, the middle-aged grow elderly...and of course we too have gotten older, hard as it is to realize that!

We never know what life will bring us, so it is so important to enjoy the time we have when happy events like this bring us together. And it's times like this that we realize the everyday things we spend our time and energy on are often not what are important in life - it's the people we love that matter.

The Road

It beckons to me. It is calling me. In fact, I must get on it. Because we are going to a Bat Mitzvah in Andover, Massachusetts, for the daughter of a very good friend of mine from college. Then we are spending two nights in Boston, just for the heck of it!

I am bringing my laptop so am not giving up on NaBloPoMo, but don't expect any deeply insightful posts on the political situation or the meaning of life.

However, I'll let you know if our favorite Italian restaurant (The Daily Catch) in the North End is as good as ever! And I'll tell you whether there is a good Irish band playing at The Black Rose. There usually is!

So on that note, I'm out of here!

Today's Haiku:

On the road again
Heading up Andover way
To see my good friends.

To a Friend Who Died Too Young

I recently lost a friend, too young. We had been out of touch for awhile, had a falling out - a long story - and had never really dealt with it. And now it's too late.

Things like this make you realize how important it is not to let things fester. If there is a problem, talk it out; if there is anger, try to understand. If there is silence, speak. Otherwise you may find, like me, that you missed your chance.

I wanted to post a poem in memory of my friend, but nothing seemed quite suitable to make the point that I wanted to make. So I wrote my own. I'm no poet and this is probably a monumentally bad poem, but I thought I'd post it anyway since it expressed what I feel.

Many times I thought of you
And almost picked up the phone
I composed letters in my mind
But they were never sent.

I often wondered how you were
But never dared to ask.
Afraid of your rejection,
It was so easy not to try.

After all, we weren’t that old,
There was always time.
Another day, another month,
Perhaps sometime next year.

But suddenly it’s all too late;
The days, the months, the years
Slipped by without a trace
Leaving all the words unsaid.

No time left to start anew
No time left to make amends
Only time to feel the pain
Of wishing you were here again.

Currents in Time

“Make new friends,
But keep the old…
One is silver,
And the other, gold.”

We used to sing this in my Girl Scout troop, along with such other classics as “Rise Up O Flame,” and “Fires Burning,” all of which were sung as rounds, around the campfire. My mother was our leader and she loved music and singing, so we were always doing things like this in our troop.

The funny thing is, I still know all the words to those three songs. And I’ve always felt particularly attached to the “Make new friends” song, because it is so true.

I’m the kind of person who never gives up on a friendship. If I lose touch with someone it’s because the other person didn’t write back, or stopped sending the holiday cards, not because I did.

I have friends from every stage of my life who are still part of my life now. I have a friend from 8th grade, three from high school, and three from college. I am still in touch via e-mail or cards with all of them, and still see two of the high school friends and all three college friends in person on a fairly regular, if infrequent, basis.

But I had one friend from my years after college whom I had lost touch with over five years ago. And she wasn’t just any friend – she was the friend who introduced me to my husband. In fact, they were friends first, so we go back a long way with her.

DH and I had stayed close with our friend throughout her short first marriage, and well into her second. We are the godparents of her son.

But after about twenty years of friendship, we somehow drifted apart, and suddenly the time had gone by and we hadn’t seen each other, or our godson, for way too long for it to be resolved by a casual phone call…it had become one of those awkward things.

The thoughts went through my mind, “Is she mad at me? Did I do something to offend her? Does she just think we’re boring?” And I eventually did give up on her after e-mails weren’t answered and holiday cards weren’t reciprocated.

But it weighed on me. She had been so much a part of our lives for so long, that it was very strange not to be in touch with her and her family anymore.

Then something happened to give us the opportunity to rekindle the friendship. Our godson became best friends with the son of our friend who lives down the street from us. They happen to be the same age and were involved in activities together, and became fast friends.

Star Trek advanced a theory in one of their best episodes, “The City On the Edge of Forever,” that time has a shape and direction to it. As Spock said, “There is a theory…There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river-- with currents, eddies, backwash.” In the episode, because of the “currents in time,” Spock and Kirk are able to go back in time to find Dr. McCoy, who had ended up on 20th Century Earth through a time portal and had changed history.

I have seen so many examples of this happening in real life that I can’t help but think there is something to it. Currents in time somehow got our neighbor’s son together with our godson, and gave us the opening to renew our friendship with his parents. We started seeing our godson fairly often since he was hanging out on our street with our neighbor and her son. He is now a young man of 14, several years older than we had last seen him. I figured sooner or later we would see his parents again.

And, finally, this past weekend, we were both down the street at our other friend’s house and our godson was there and his mom was coming to pick him up. So we lay in wait until her car arrived and then we came out to see her. She and her mother were in the car and I hugged her, and it was as if no time had passed (although DH and I are both a lot grayer than five years ago!). The ice was broken and now we plan to get together.

Our friend is like a vortex in that river of time – without her, DH and I would never have met; and as a result, two other friends of ours would never have met THEIR husbands, one of whom is my husband’s best friend. An awful lot of people’s lives would have changed if we’d never known her.

There is a lot of value in keeping friends from our past. It is more than just the camaraderie and joy of the friendship itself. As you get older, fewer and fewer people are left who remember who you were many years ago. Our grandparents pass on, our parents pass on. Eventually our friends and our siblings are the only ones left who can remember who we were, way back when.

There is a song called “The Dutchman” that expresses this idea eloquently:

Long ago I used to be a young man,
And dear Margaret remembers that for me

Without our friends, who would still remember that we were young once? And be able to reminisce with us about those days?

I’m glad that I have another chance to have my friend back. We may be different now than we were 25 years ago; we may not have all the same interests or priorities in life. But we know who we are and where we came from, and we remember the laughter, the tears, and the experiences we shared. And now we can continue to share new experiences as our friendship moves into yet another phase in our lives.

P.S.

DH has reminded me that I should give credit to author Harlan Ellison for writing the original "City on the Edge of Forever" Star Trek episode.