Carrie Link

My friend is here, SUZY!!!!! She got here yesterday and we went immediately to opposing couches with our lovely, refreshing beverages, and began a wonderful gabfest that went on for hours and hours. It is Suzy's friends that own the apartment, but it is me that has been "living" here all week, so we're both laughing at me, and how I act like I own the place, and am hosting her.

We talked writing, life, wild journeys between the two, and all that's happened in the two years since we met. We both remember meeting each other for the first time, but disagree (totally) on how the conversation went. She claims (falsely) that my first words to her were, "Hi! I'm Carrie! Are you a motherless daughter?" Can you believe it? And it if it's true, which it totally isn't, can you believe we ever had a second conversation?? WHO starts conversations like that? Me, she would say.

Then, I got a wonderful surprise yesterday when Terry called to tell me she was taking the train in to see me today!!! Philly is only 1 1/2 hours away, and although she had originally told me she just couldn't swing it this week, it was killing both of us to be so close, yet so far, so we came up with a 5 hour compromise plan.

I met her at Penn Station, we walked next door to find a place to talk, sat there for five hours straight, then put her back on a train to her busy life as wife, mother, full-time career woman. Five hours, though, that I won't soon forget, nor their preciousness.

Tonight Kim is taking the train in to have dinner with Suzy and me, and the gabfest will continue. The three of us came together for one reason, and stay together for another. We live in three alternate universes, with a oneness that can't be denied.

Tomorrow I will get up and fully caffeinate with Suzy, then she'll drive me to the airport where I'll leave to go home. The best part of travel is the new appreciation for what you've left behind. And while I'll leave Terry, Suzy, Kim (and Isabel!) and Courtney "behind," their friendships are coming with.


** Okay,someone just texted me and told me the outlandish thing I said to HER, the first time we met, so I invite you, dear readers, to tell me what else I should be horrified/mortified/vilified for! Lord. Have. Mercy.