Old Friends

"Make new friends,

but keep the old.

One is silver, 

and the other is gold."

 

Last week I was reunited with some very good friends. First , Talia, my BFF for the past 15 years was enjoying a romantic getaway with her husband in Napa Valley. He agreed to share her one afternoon and I drove down so we could have lunch. It was quite the dramatic trip, however, for a couple of reasons. This is a long story, so go grab your cup of tea. I’ll wait….

My story begins on the previous Saturday night when Jon and I hired a babysitter so we could go out for his birthday. On our way home, I was counting out the cash to give the sitter, when out of the corner of my eye I see one of the neighborhood kids holding a dog that looked suspiciously like Samson. I told Jon to slow down to inquire and sure enough, our dog had managed to run away during our date night. 

Scoundrel!

It turns out he must have sneaked out the front door when our babysitter ran to her car to grab her computer charger and she never even noticed he was missing. He’s stealth like that. 

Anyway, he’s pulled this prank several times before and it always turns out okay because he just runs right up to the first person he sees. But the point of this story in terms of my Napa trip was that in all of the excitement, I had simply stuffed the excess cash into my purse pocket and never put it back into my wallet. 

Because Forest was accompanying me to Napa, I grabbed my wallet out of my purse, stuffed it in the diaper bag and got on the road. When I was sitting in the toll line, I opened my wallet to discover I had zero cash! I tried quickly counting all of my coins but was coming up about $1.50 short. In addition to that, I still haven’t taken out my British coins so as soon as I thought I found something to up my total, it would end up with me frustratingly tossing the poundage aside. 

Needless to say, I ended up at the cashier window without my $5 toll. I was going to plead for sympathy, but the toll worker was having none of it. She handed me a ticket for $25 smackers (plus the $5 toll charge). Dang! I accepted my fine and tried to salvage the trip. 

As I pulled onto the Napa/Sonoma Highway just 15 minutes from Talia’s cottage, I was stopped at a red light when I saw my baby boy become possessed by a demon and begin projectile vomiting for seriously 60 seconds straight. I pulled into the nearest gas station and tried to clean up as much puke as possible and also assessed my baby for other signs of sickness. 

Forest has been a blessedly healthy baby so this was my first experience with him being sick. It scared me senseless. I called Talia (who is conveniently a doctor) and she talked me down from a ledge. She said it could be carsickness, a GI bug, or something he ate. Since he wasn’t running a fever and seemed pretty happy (though a bit tired because his vomiting interrupted his car nap), I decided to take him to Talia’s cottage where she could sort of assess him and that way at least I could hang with her a little bit and she could meet my baby. 

When I got to their cottage I tried feeding him a bit. He kept down his formula just fine and seemed to have a good appetite so we just chalked it up to a fluke and went ahead with lunch plans. We headed into downtown Youtville (so cute!) and had some burgers while we caught up a bit on life. 

It just felt so effortless. In the constant relocation process I feel like I'm always in the 'getting to know each other' phase with friends. It's exciting and I love meeting new people constantly, but at the same time it felt wonderful and effortless to be in the company of someone who just knows me. 

I don't have to give her my history or background because she lived my history with me. She knows my family. She watched me fall in love with my husband. She stood by my side at my wedding. Those sorts of friends are invaluable. It felt strange that she hadn't seen me as a mom yet, so I'm glad I got to bring Forest along for the trip.

I definitely got emotional when our time together was over. For the past 4 years, Talia has been completing her OBGYN residency in New Orleans so it’s been easy to get together on my frequent visits to south Louisiana. Now that her residency is over, she’s accepted a job in Northern Alabama, so it’s unlikely that our paths will naturally cross very much. I’m not worried about losing touch because we’ve already survived so much in our 15 year friendship, but we will surely have to be much more intentional about seeing each other.   

It’s such a hard time in our lives for long distance friends. People are starting careers and families and it’s just much harder to gather together when you have to consider vacation days, travel time, and baby schedules. I hated saying goodbye to her without knowing when I’d see her again. 

The sting was eased a bit by knowing that friends from Aberdeen, Nary and Gerald, would be staying with us over the weekend. Nary and Gerald live in Bakersfield which is just a 4 hour drive from us. Gerald and Jonathan had big plans to golf while Nary and I spent some time baby shopping (she’s expecting their first in mid-December). Every night we would play mahjong until it was time for bed. Mahjong and just being in the company of good friends was so good for my soul. 

And having them visit was refreshing as well. Lately I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged about having all my friends so spread out, it was encouraging to actually get to spend some quality time again with some of our besties from Aberdeen. 

Thanks for the visit guys! I hope y’all don’t mind that we’ve already invited ourselves to come visit you in Bako!  You might want to get an early start on baby-proofing….