Old friends, sat on their park bench like bookends

I was able to schedule a dinner, last week in Dallas, with a longtime friend who's lived there for the past ten years. We were very close when we lived in the same area, but then we moved to different places, and, while we've kept in touch, we've not seen each other often. I hadn't seen her in eleven or twelve years, hadn't met her husband (their tenth anniversary will be this summer).

And yet that connection we had is still there. We spent about 4 hours talking (and cooking and eating), and the special stuff — the inside jokes, the gestures and expressions, the way we interacted with each other — it's all there as it was in 1988, before I moved away (I was the first to go).

And on top of that, there's more now, because her life is richer. She has a husband, she's seen his two daughters through their teen years into adulthood, she has a world of new experiences to talk about, as I have new things to talk about too. How great it was to be able to keep sharing the old things, and to share the new things as well!