Reconnecting

Out of the blue, I got a call from someone I haven't seen since I was 21 and living in Germany. The call came just as I was helping Larry hoist a brute of an aluminum ladder up on the roof so he could reattach a cedar shingle that had come loose in a recent storm.

Susan and I attended the Collegium Palatinum in Heidelberg--me fresh out of law school. Then, I had plans to become a bureaucrat and work for the European Commission--the group that oversees the business of the European community--in Brussels and I needed fluency in a second European language. Susan was a journalism major.

She and I and a bunch of friends spent many evenings in Heidelberg kneipes throwing back bootfuls of cold frothy beer (that's the German yard of Ale). I remember her sitting in a bar wearing a huge quilted maroon jacket writing furiously as the erst of us drank ourselves silly.
When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, "Writing a letter to a friend back home."
It struck me as very funny then.

I met Susan and her hubby Eric at the Starbucks in town. Eric's an alum of the The Solebury School and they were down for the alumni weekend. We'd arranged to meet in front of a shop called Taste of India and I recognized her immediately. That pleased me. I ahte it when people change so much, you don't remember them.

A pleasant hour was spent drinking coffee and eating bananas on the Starbucks veranda watching the people stroll by. Our conversation wasn't about the past--well, other than asking about some people both of us had lost contact with straight after the course ended. That's when I learned neither of us are nostalgic people.

She and her hubby run a magazine out of Southampton, Long Island and they do a clown show which the local kids love.

It's great to reconnect. Highly recommend it.