Season for old friends

This must be my season for old friends.  I welcome them into my life warmly.

Do you still see our old group?” I asked my sister-in-law.

“Once in a while,” she said. “When Marilou invites us to lunch.”

“Next time count me in. Don’t forget,” I said, and so it happened.

The biggest surprise was Mimi, who I hadn’t seen in dog years. We were in our twenties and early thirties when we were the closest of friends. I was so happy to see her and her two daughters who were little girls then and now are in their forties. We hadn’t spoken to each other intimately in a long, long while. The years rolled by like a cascading river as we spoke about the rocks in our relationships and how we — mostly me — overcame them. We were friends before our mid-life crises hit.

My mid-life crisis was a whopper. It put me out of contact with my then closest friends. I made a wide swath of new friends at work. And I had a lot of work, sometimes I would get home really late. My children sometimes resented that but now I see my son working those hours too and I smile to myself thinking, maybe now he understands the hours I kept then.

But here we are happily together again after 40 years, talking intimately again, wanting to be close again. I would call Mimi and invite her to lunch except my car just died again. I have to buy myself a new car. This one refuses to run anymore.

I saw him in a crowd and thought, I know that man. I know those liquid light brown eyes. I used to think he had lambent eyes, eyes that won over all the women he wanted. “Eddie?” I said. He turned and looked at me. “It’s Tweetums,”I reintroduced myself because we have both grown old. Maybe he did not recognize me.

“Why are you here?” he asked, trying to figure out what I was doing in an event usually private to families.

“Once upon a time she was my sister-in-law,” I said. Then things started to fall in his head as he remembered. Old lives, stale details, everything happened so long ago. He introduced me to a friend of the same age and we chatted a while.

“She writes a column,” he said, “ When I read I think, ‘It’s human.’ Her columns are so human. Sometimes I think this could be me.”

“I wanted to be a columnist when I returned from the States,” I explained. “First thing I did was look at what everyone else was writing. They were writing politics. I hate politics. So I decided to write about life in the first person though I l make sure there is something in each piece that is true for most people. Now there are many who write the same way.”

Eddie I would rank as an old acquaintance. I think once we were trying for friendship but his mother lifted the phone and told him something about pajamas. That must have embarrassed him. He never called again. Then the memories started to fall like cards. We met at the St. Theresa’s College Day in San Marcelino. I was wearing a pretty coral dress. I don’t know how old I was. Maybe 15. After that he would call me once in a while.

I never saw him at the usual parties. I got married went to work then one day walking down the street I saw him in the front seat of a car. “Eddie,” I called and we waved at each other. I don’t remember seeing him again for a long time. The next time I saw him was in a nightclub somewhere and he was surrounded by women. Again I waved and he waved back.

Then 20 years or more later I was having breakfast with a girlfriend at a restaurant and he was there. I waved again. When it was time to pay our bill, the waitress said he had paid for it already and had gone.  “What a little waving can do,” I told my friend and we both laughed.

Then tonight I see him again and we talk for a short while. He is still a friendly acquaintance.

Received a text from an old friend from the Palm Village days inviting me to a reunion after 40 years. I remember the old crowd. We use to have Christian Family Movement (CFM) meetings when we used to discuss the Bible and then we would play charades after the priest left. We had so much fun then. We were young, all newlyweds. But I don’t have a car so how can I go? I will find a way. I would love to see those old friends again.

This must be my season for old friends. I welcome them into my life warmly.

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