Visit from a friend

Last weekend my one remaining friend from my college days came to visit. Although we had met a couple of times in the past few years (once in Monterey and once at her home in Washington), she hadn't been to visit me for more than 17 years. Yikes! She'd never seen my house and hadn't seen the valley area since it was so built up. Although my compulsive cleaning days are long since past, I'm still house proud enough to have spent the weekend and week before the visit cleaning and straightening frantically.

Carol was supposed to visit during the summer but we rescheduled until a time we thought my family life would be more settled. The timing worked out well. We spent one day with my mom, taking her to lunch and to see her old home and all her "stuff." We spent another day at the Jelly Belly factory and wine tasting. Another day we sat around and schmoozed. It's incredibly reassuring to talk with another person who knows your history, knows your family and is experiencing the same trials of getting older (everything from elderly stubborn parents to slower metabolisms to wrinkles).

Without a doubt my closest and oldest friend is my sis, but it's different. With my sis, my history is her history, my family is her family, my aging is her aging. There's no outside point of view, no gap in experience, no comparison of families. It's great to catch up when there's been a long time apart, reminiscing about people and places that you haven't thought of for decades. It's fun to trade stories of the past years, interesting to get another opinion.

Thank you Carol, for a wonderful break from real life. Let's do it again soon!