A visit

Unexpectedly, I spent yesterday afternoon with my Junior year college roommate.  She called out of the blue after fifteen years of silence to let me know she was in town and wanted to see me.  We had been close for a long time, her son lives in Seattle, and she even lived here for a year, the duration of a dreadfully mistaken marriage.  Then she went back East and shut me out of her life.  I've never known why.  But I'm not one to hold grudges.and she was surprised to be so easily forgiven.  But the forgiveness comes from no longer really caring.

We caught each other up on what's happened since our last meeting, and I was struck once again by how incredibly different our lives have been.  I was the working class girl from Brooklyn, timid, unworldly and on scholarship, intimidated by the sheer size of the famous university we attended.  Nancy was from a wealthy and cultured Massachusetts family, played the flute and dressed in a wonderfully preppie way.  But somehow we connected and remained friends; I was a bridesmaid at her first wedding.  She is now on her fourth marriage; I've been single all along.  It was good to see her, and she invited me to stay with her during our 50th college reunion next year, which I was hoping, but could not afford, to attend.

Later I drove her back to her son's house in a beautiful neighborhood called Laurelhurst.  It's all old houses and mature trees, green and shady, and almost no traffic.  I met her granddaughters, and then headed home, driving up 35th Avenue with sun and shade drifting by overhead.  A lovely trip.

And here are a couple of photographs of the beautiful clouds we are having during this sunny week.