Inspirational
Collapsing Years and Distances
“Almost two decades ago, all I had to do was go into her room and slump on her sofa. She then would leave her table and join me and we would talk—as lengthily as decency during office hours would allow.
“Today one of us had to cross an ocean with husband, fly 12 hours and another hour to get just nearer to where I was. And I had to cross two interstate highways with my husband driving.
“And then, there we were face-to-face, eyeballing each other.
“The years, the decades, melted away.
“It was US all over again. With wrinkles and creaking bones this time. Friendship that saw us through the good and bad, the happy and sad, the triumphs and losses, and the joys and heartbreaks.
“Everything that you go through when you go through life.
“It was great seeing you again, Grace and Tony!”
That’s how my friend Lucy, who always had a way with words, wrote on her FB wall about our meeting in LA recently. I couldn’t have said it better.
Another friend, Cherry, immediately wrote a riposte, “What decades? What oceans? Friends are never far away from each other’s thoughts . . . BTW, you two look like there weren’t any decades.”
Both born before the digital age, Lucy and I forgot to document our meeting, except for two hastily and poorly taken selfies and shots by our equally techno-challenged escorts before we said our hurried good-byes.
Our eyeballing was brief, much too brief, and not enough to catch up on all that happened in each of our worlds, headed by equally controversial presidents. But it was a meeting nevertheless, something that FB or emails can never replace.
I will forget what we ate, or what we drank, or where we went to, or what we talked about, but I will always remember the date, May 27, 2017. I will celebrate it next year the way we celebrate Thanksgiving Day.
I will thank God for His grace of friendship that collapses years and distances.
