Old Friends

We are sitting on the porch looking out over Kelly's Cove on Penobscot Bay. The evenings are long, shadows longer at the end of the day. We are having the last of the wine we all drank at dinner. The guests are gone and I savor this rare time with my oldest friend I have known since I was sensible at the age of four.

We do not talk about our families; there has been plenty of time for that during this week's visit. And we do not exchange histories of all the time since high school. We do not talk about our men, sons, brothers and husbands. Juliet sits back in her porch chair, almost folded into the night and I think how beautiful she is right now. We talk about the students we have had over our long careers as teachers. We give each other the gift of nuanced and poignant stories we have never told before. No one at all, including my siblings, shares such a long intimate history with me as Juliet does.

 Now we are both retired and live in our paradises north and south. We both give our new lives (after working so many years) a great new energy in our communities. Juliet revels in teaching in a "senior" college where anyone can learn and anyone can teach.

Being here for most of a week, anticipating a hurricane that wasn't much beyond some wind and rain where we were, my husband and I were welcomed and fascinated by being in this household. Juliet's husband, Paul, is a local doctor, the ethical and intelligent kind we all wish we had. We love their comfortable house so nicely situated across the lane from the endlessly interesting coming and going of the tide over the rocks and beach. One day we cheered Paul on as he swam (in water much too cold for these Floridians) with Velvet, their amazing dog.

Everything was so comfortable. We loved the walks along the shore line into the small village of toy-like colorful cottages full of summer people enjoying the last days of summer, sitting on the porches, watering the petunias, hauling their kayaks in and out. We loved the produce market where locals sold hand made cheeses and those tiny sweet blueberries (picked by Little Sal's mother?) We loved going to a chamber music concert in a close by village, and we loved shopping in the co-op for some of our meals. Of course we loved talking politics and books.

Since we were little, Juliet and I spent every possible moment outdoors in the woods and still, we are both so interested in plants and birds as a part of life.

I enjoyed hanging up the freshly washed clothes on a line out back where the woods came down the hill and the hummingbirds buzzed everything red. Everything just felt right!

Seeing my old friend again was just the best. We all have those old wrinkled faces, and the usual health issues, but I certainly rejoice to think of the incredible skein of our lives.