Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears….
— Old Friends, Simon and Garfunkel
Over the course of a lifetime, you meet a few people who become your friends and stay your friends, even if you lose touch for a while. I don’t know what the variable is that keeps the connection open between some old friends but not between others.
Yesterday I had a visit from a former Significant Other. He lives in Pacific Northwest now, and we exchange emails every once in a while. He had come out to visit his family in various locales in the Northeast, and he had a few hours in between visits, so he stopped by. We had had a few good years together, years ago, — dancing, vacationing, just hanging out, arguing politics (both government and gender). One summer we rented a houseboat and cruised around the St. Lawrence Seaway for a couple of weeks. I remember that he invented coffee bags long before anyone else had every heard of the things. He would empty out tea bags and fill them with ground coffee beans, and then he could just make himself a quick cup of regular whenever he wanted. (I neither drink nor make coffee). I guess our relationship just ran its course.
Before he moved across the country, and long after we had stopped being each other’s Significant, I ran into him at a ballroom dance and he told me that he was going out to Oregon to check out where he might want to live. When I mentioned that my son was living out there, he invited me to come along on the trip and pay a visit to theonetruebix and the cybercafe that he owned back then. My old friend and I had a relaxed, comfortable, and Platonic time visiting and sightseeing and even making it out to the Pacific Ocean for the first time in both our lives. My mother still says he was the nicest guy I dated since my divorce.
Hmmmmm interesting !!!