Long Ago/Here and Now

I had a wonderful afternoon today with blipper tookie, who went to the same high school that I did, as we discovered on Blipfoto some time ago, and two women who also went to the same high school as I did -- and lived for part of their childhoods on the same street as me!

Tookie (right above), with the help of her longtime friends K (left above) and P (on the right in this link), prepared an amazing "high tea" in the spacious home that P is renting here. I met P through Tookie a few months ago, and in the course of our conversation at that time, we discovered we'd gone to the same church and high school, and lived on the same street for part of our youth! I met K for the first time today; she is visiting from Alaska. 

I'm two years older than Tookie and three years older than P and K, but they all enjoyed looking through my high school yearbook from 1965 and talking about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the years afterward. I also shared this photo of me (in red), age 12, with my mother and sisters in spring 1959, outside our house in a new housing development/estate -- the same one where P and K lived. P could pick out her house in the background!

I relished their stories of growing up, which gave me new insights into my own journey from child to adult to elder, and look forward to more time with each of these wise women. 

And I'm still amazed that we've met -- what are the odds of the four of us, growing up in an eastern suburb of Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1960s, but not knowing each other then, getting together here in Bellingham in our 60s?

(P.S. Phil caught a colorful kayaker in action on Lake Padden today -- enjoy here.)