Thursday, August 5, 2010

Road Trip: Part 12

Morning dawned with yet another brother on the itinerary, and we headed to the suburb of Morton Grove. The weather was being peculiarly cooperative, and we were looking forward to more family time.

Meanwhile, I had reconnected with an old friend, and we were planning to meet for lunch. And when I say “old friend,” this was my best friend in high school and we’d been through some…interesting…times together.

Even though we hadn’t seen each other for something like thirty years, I felt like a teenager when I was driving to the restaurant to meet her. A sort of creaky and wiser teenager, but still a teenager.

Let’s just say that there was a bit of tearing up and a lot of hugging that went on, and pretty soon we were telling each other everything that had gone on in the intervening years. It was like time hadn’t passed, except of course we were catching up on thirty years instead of the few hours we would have been apart when we were teens. The more we talked, the more we remembered. Lunch turned into several hours while the coffee got cold and the ice cubes melted and the lunch crowd disappeared.

My friend and I had been inseparable during some really fun times, and those happy days got us through some very painful times in both of our lives. You can have dozens of school pals or neighborhood buddies or work friends, but there are a few friendships that go beyond that. I don’t have any sisters, but I don’t think a sister could have been any closer that we were.

And then we drifted apart. I’m not sure what happened, but we lost touch little by little, and then I moved away. I made new friends but there always seemed to be something missing.

Then, in ten seconds, and after thirty years, it felt right again.

Oh yeah, and we had lunch. It’s completely irrelevant.
Yum