Fun With Old Friends

I got an e-mail from Emily last week saying that she'd be in town visiting a college friend this weekend, was I free to get together some time? (For those of you that don't know, I've known Emily since I was 4. We went to grade, middle and high school together.) I hadn't seen Emily in about 4 years, so I told her that I would be happy to block out some time. She said she'd call when she got in. Fast forward to yesterday when my phone rings and Em's on the other end. How does breakfast and coffee somewhere sound? Great! The plan was that I'd drop Daniel off at Sunday School after picking him up from his sleepover and meet her. Oh, and was it okay that she invited Amy (a friend of mine from high school who recently moved here but I had yet to see)? Absolutely.

So, this morning, I dropped Daniel off at the synagogue and left for Panera. As I was driving over, I remembered that Emily was always consistently late and I probably could have hung out with the kids for a little longer, and, I discovered, that she hasn't changed. LOL! I was waiting in the lobby, checking over my calendar for the week when a family walked in. I looked up and thought that the mom looked familiar. They walk past and once I hear her talk, I knew instantly it was Amy. I looked up again and, kind of quietly, said, "Amy?" She turns around and says, "yes? Barb? Are you kidding me? I thought that might be you!" She introduces me to her new husband and stepdaughters (we've already decided her oldest stepdaughter and Jacob are going to get married...LOL!). A little later, Emily and her friend, Karen, come in and we all sit to chat.

What's kind of cool is that we did less reminiscing than I thought we'd do and mostly shared stories about our lives now. Amy has some very interesting stories from her days of being a police officer (she still is but she's more in ballistics and forensics now), and Emily had some interesting stories from working in the psych ward. We all thought our lives were pretty boring to us but there was a lot of laughter and interest when we shared them with each other. Emily told me that it was strange that I was such a grown up. When did that happen?

All of us did try to convince Emily that she needed to move out here. Her oldest friend (me), her high school best friend (Amy) and her college best friend (Karen) are here, and apparently, she's the glue friend since she got Amy and I to finally get together. It was obvious that she'd like to move out here but probably won't.

Anyway, after almost 3 hours of catching up, we decided it was time to go. Amy and I decided that we were going to start doing a couples' night and would try to get the kids together the next time they had them. It is so nice to have friends!