My friend Robin came to visit me for a couple of days. She lives in San Diego and was on her way to the North Carolina mountains to spend time with family. I am so glad she decided to make a pit stop at my house.
Robin and I have known each other since the time we were fresh college graduates in Tallahassee. We were young and crazy then, both just divorced from husbands we probably should have never married. We made each other laugh. We called each other Dink, wore each other’s clothes and read each other’s thoughts.
I moved to Atlanta in 1990; Robin left for California shortly thereafter. And long stretches of time passed between our meetings. But still, when I see her, it feels as though time stood still. We own more wrinkles on our skin, more aches in our bodies. We are wiser for the wear, our vastly varied life experiences known and not known to each other.
But we still make each other laugh. And laugh.
In the dressing room of Squash Blossom in Decatur, we giggled our heads off so much that the sales lady remembered us from our last visit there together.
And in the evening, we dressed as two middle-class Indian women off for a sumptuous dinner at one of my favorite Indian restaurants: Bhojanic. I even stuck a bindi on Robin’s head.
She left a few minutes ago and my world seems so suddenly still. So quiet.
I am returning to my reality, thinking about how to rectify my lack of sleep before I head in for another overnight shift. The afternoon sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds, shards of light dancing on the hardwood floors of my front room.
But today, I feel a little richer for feeling tired.
