Old Friends
It’s official: I have gotten addicted to depositing the pickings of my brain here, which became clear as I got antsier and antsier at being unable to write for five days while busy working and taking a weekend trip to the south. “Who is reading your blog?” an acquaintance asked me recently in a fake friendly tone that implied she felt no one could possibly want to. I replied, totally sincerely, “Two people that I know of — one girlfriend and my daughter’s sweet boyfriend.” (Hi Matt!) But who cares? Like the Yankees of 1998, like Dancing with the Stars, like High School Musical 3, sitting at this screen is therapy.
So…old friends. We saw a ton of them over the weekend as my college roommate got married for the first time at 54. She looked absolutely beautiful in a strapless satin gown. Strapless! I could never pull that off, but she did it and didn’t look a day over 35. I watched in awe and envy as the newlyweds and their local friends, who belong to a ballroom dancing group in Birmingham, glided across the floor in perfect form. I love to dance but never learned moves like I saw at that reception. One man was 80 and floated as sexily as a college student. Yeah!
When you move far away, as my darling husband and I did at 22, you lose touch with people, so it’s a little surreal to look across a restaurant table three decades later at the guy who was the fraternity flirt, the basketball star, the sweetest girl in the sorority. Beyond that, to see two girlfriends of 50 years (!) and picture myself a little girl, eating black-eyed peas and cornbread in one friend’s kitchen and watching Dark Shadows after school with the other one. One of them remembers the song we sang at age five in the “dance revue” when we wore the fetching costume pictured at the top of my blog! Holy Toledo!
Back on the plane, headed north, we were glad to have had a nice visit with my DH’s brother and his family and to have seen a dozen close friends at six different eating locations (three within the perimeter of one mall!) in two days. So when my precious trainer said last night, “Why are you so quiet? Are you mad at me?” I smiled wearily and replied, “I am talked OUT.”
November 30th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Was relieved to log on this morning and see all of these posts. Your friend doesn’t know what she’s missing! Was just talking about Dark Shadows the other day and trying to explain it to my own DH in light of the “Twilight” phenomenon. Figures you watched it too.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Well you can add me to your list, reading all the way across the pond my lovely friend — and LOVING IT. Your writing sparkles. It’s an inspiration. xo.