this was originally written in an openoffice document because I didn’t have any DNS at the coffeeshop…eventually, I managed to post. 🙂
I have lots of nice creamy wireless network, but I can’t actually get to the internet. Grr.
I really wanted to blog right now, too, because I just had something really wonderful happen, after a lousy morning. (Gardening was nice, but the home atmosphere was decidedly chilly.)
What I really wanted, right around 12:30 or so, was to just get the hell out of Dodge, so I grabbed my backpack & laptop and cycled downtown to pick up some library books. When I came out, I looked at my phone quickly and suddenly remembered that I had a important phone call to make.
This is the story that I wanted to tell a few weeks ago, but didn’t want to chance ruining the surprise….
Y’all may remember my lament about losing track entirely of one of my very oldest friends. Her family had moved, and I had no addresses, phone numbers, email: nothing at all. And a common enough name that neither Google nor the phone book were going to be of much use.
A few weeks ago I got an evite from someone I didn’t know, inviting me to a surprise party for Thao, on the occasion of completing her residency and becoming an honest-to-God doctor. I decided not to go, but also to call during the party (thanks for the advice, Dorothea & Kermit), since there was a phone number included with the invitation.
I’ve been biting my tongue since then, because I was ecstatic at being in touch with Thao again, but I didn’t want the chance that she might, sometime between, get a wild hair to google my name. (Because I am Elaine Nelson. 😉 )
So at 1:30, on the verge of forgetting entirely because of my crummy morning, I sat down outside the library and called the number. Her mom, I think, picked up, and then handed me over…at first she didn’t hear me, but then we had one of those oh-my-god-it’s-you moments.
And an exhilarating conversation, trying to catch up on most of 10 years, and definitely the last four, in the space of 20 minutes. What a wonderful, wonderful thing. She sounds the same as I remember her, and she remembers all the people that nobody up here knows, all the family stuff…asked how old Elizabeth is, and we both lamented getting old at that thought.
Dr. Tran. Which is just as astonishing to me as she found my being married. She’s setting up a private practice down there, and I bet she’s just fantastic. We both seem to have found the professions that suit us perfectly, even if she knew what hers was at 12, and mine didn’t exist until 10 years ago.
Now I have her phone number and her email address, and it feels as though another bit of my life has re-raveled (if that makes any sense).
Oh, and Thao, if you’re reading? Most of the last 4 years can be found right here, in something of a play-by-play.