During this European Adventure, and as I have been sharing with you in my previous posts, many faces, new and not so new, have shared a moment or two with us during their visit to the City of Love. For that, we shall be eternally grateful. Thank you for making us part of your European visit.
Today, I want to finish my series on friends and visitors with one that I am sure I will never forget. It was September, 1981 and started going to the big kids’ school. It was big and scary, but it was alright, I couldn’t deny it. I really didn’t like my teacher, she screamed a lot, however, I remember liking the place altogether. My dad dropped me off every day a bit before 8:00 AM. Some say that it is in the school years where one creates the strongest links with friends, and this encounter is probably one of those which proves it right.
I don’t actually remember how we became close, but I do remember she and I, together with another girl were a little harmless gang. And I dare to call us that because we spent a lot of time together, even our mothers were really good friends. Anyway, come the end of first grade the three of us went to another school for an admission test. We were all accepted, but I was the only one who didn’t change schools. I never met with them again. They were lucky; they continued to share classrooms.
Then, Facebook came, and I most probably don’t need to say much more. Little by little we re-connected, but never even talked about getting together. We each had our lives and we didn’t take a moment to think about re-uniting.
Later, the big move. I find myself on the other side of the Big Blue, and what happens? Well, one of the girls announces more than two years after I have been in the land of Astérix & Obélix that she’s coming. I react sending her a message to meet with her. She answers, but I never get the message. We try again before she returns to Mexico. We succeed!
The morning of the meeting I woke up, got ready, and honestly I don’t know where time went or what I did. It was late, and I was angry at myself… I WAS LATE, GODDAMN IT!
In order to arrive as fast as possible I grabbed a cab and manage to be there only a few minutes after the rendez-vous. It was only 9:35AM or so. She hadn’t arrived, whew! The hostess showed me to a table and I patiently sat down to wait for her while chatting with another one of our school friends via Whatsapp in Dublin. What a crazy world we live in now, I thought.
A moment or two later, she was there. She approached me by my first name. I turned a bit surprised; I recognized her voice. Astonishing! No time had passed? Yes, it had been thirty years since we had last seen each other. We sat down to have breakfast. We couldn’t stop talking. Our conversation was about everything, every one, about life, about success, failure, what we have done in life so far, what we haven’t done, we talked about our parents, our siblings; everything. When we realized being hungry again it was undeniable, it was a bit after 2:00 PM. We decided to leave and go elsewhere. Walked straight ahead, then left, probably also right. Suddenly, we were in front of the Opera House, where we decided to enter a little sandwich place on the corner of the street, since literally we just wanted to sit down again and keep on talking. By 5:00 PM I had to run and take care of the errands of the day before dinner. Time had flown so fast.
We agreed to meet again, hoping for it to be sooner rather than later. I promised to call her next time I visit Mexico; we cannot get together every 30 years, and hey, maybe this time we’ll talk the third musketeer into joining for old-time sake.
Spanish