Picking up where we left off
We call each other by our surnames, Mrs. A and I, a habit that dates back to when our sons were preschool friends in Connecticut. She and I shared the traditional rule that our children must address adults as Mr. and Mrs. She and I did the same, and it stuck.
It had been three years since she and I had been together – the last time as we were emerging from the COVID fog and I drove to her. Now it was her turn to come here.
We’ve talked by phone every month or so, enough to fill in the gaps of what’s been happening with our families. In that time my daughter graduated from college, married and moved out of state and then back again; my son moved from Los Angeles to Kentucky and got engaged. Her son moved to New York City for a job; her daughter earned her law degree.
All the 20 minutes of each phone chat were consumed by the details, the necessary backfill of who and where of our kids. Sometimes we talked about our aging relatives. But then, just as it was time to hang up and get on with things, one of us would remember.
“Wait, before you go. How’s your job?”
It would come as an afterthought, a rushed 30-second headline before saying goodbye.
As empty nesters, our jobs are what propel us through our weeks, taking up our energy and our headspace. And yet, in those long-distance phone calls, our conversation shifted away from work and toward the common ground that made us friends in the first place.
Once Mrs. A was settled in after her long drive this week, we sat down to begin what would be a four-day conversation interrupted only by three quick sleeps.
“How are the kids?”
First hers and then mine and then hers again and then mine. That lasted until dinnertime. And then came the long talks on the patio, and there, with the luxury of time and close proximity, we dug in about everything else.
Hours of talk that were helpful, edifying, supportive, revealing, introspective, thought-provoking, reminiscent, and always really, really funny – the kind of conversation that happens when two buddies from way back are together again.
In “The Big Chill,” the 1980s movie about a group of college friends who gather again as thirty-somethings, there’s a line that resonated with me. The loner Nick questions whether they could all still be friends after they’d grown up.
“A long time ago we knew each other for a short period of time,” he said, casting doubt about sustaining friendship when so much time has passed. I’m not so cynical.
“It’s like with the cassette tapes,” I said to Mrs. A on her last night here. “Do you remember when our music was on cassette tapes, and we would plug them into the car dashboard?
“Uh huh,” she said.
“Well I was always really good at pushing the forward and reverse buttons to land at the exact place to hear the song I wanted,” I said.
“Me, too,” she said.
“Well, that’s the way our friendship is,” I said. “We can go without seeing each other for years, and then when we’re together we are able to go forward and back about things, and pick right back up where we left off.”
This week we talked for so many hours about so many things, I’ll be rewinding and replaying all of it for days to come. She will, too, starting with that long drive back home. I was sorry to see her pack her car and go.
“Safe travels,” I said as she pulled out of the driveway. “Until next time, Mrs. A.”