Long intermittent friendships

She and I started talking after we both left our carrels at the college library. 

Our class schedule was almost identical and soon we were studying together, especially when it came to tests.

We loved our literature courses and suffered over the Early English drama course when we read some dozen Greek and Roman plays as "scanty background material" leading up to EVERYTHING written up to Elizabeth 1. Not that we disliked the reading material, with our other courses it was hard to complete it all.

College was my sanity saver. My ex did not like or want me to go to school but conceded as long as I worked and did not slack on my wifely chores, I could. Thus working in a dry cleaner ate up study time but I still managed top grades.

I adored my studies and sharing ideas and discoveries with my new friend was one of the few joys in an otherwise over-crowded day. She too needed to work so we understood the pressures without going into too much detail.

I would not have survived an advanced French course without her. She was bilingual. Each new class, she had to teach the prof how to pronounce her French name

Her lecture notes that I needed to translate word for word, gave me what I needed including a deep appreciation of the plays with the exception of "Waiting for Godot," which I've seen in English too many times. Don't ask why I keep going.

When she was to marry a classmate, she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. Although the dress was bought, I had to back out at the last minute. My marriage was on the brink of failing and not going was the price of counseling, which did not work. I still feel badly that I missed it.

After college we kinda lost contact although we did meet up with our new babies, both daughters, born close together. 

For our couples to meet together was not successful. My ex did not like them and only later did I understand that some males deliberately cut their wives off from their friends.

Our lives evolved. She was a successful and happy teacher. Her husband did well in business including a sojourn abroad. I didn't teach but went corporate but always kept a writing component in whatever work I did until I escaped to my life-long dream of living in Europe.

Only in the last decade did we reconnect, thanks to the internet. My new husband, who encouraged me to maintain friendships and is liked by her husband, and I visited them in the Cape Cod home, enjoyed a meal of lobster. The time together was if we were still in school, only then we would never have been able to afford lobster. 

They came to stay with us in Argeles.

Until Covid, they alternated years in France by themselves and leading a group. Twice we joined them on tour for a couple of days. 

Covid stopped this routine.

This year they returned to France for the first time since the pandemic. We tried to align our time but our schedules didn't work. As the French say, dommage, too bad.

Still I feel blessed, even though we won't be able to sit down this time over  a good French meal and lots of conversation, she and I e-mail frequently, sharing news, sharing opinions on books and politics and other topics. 

I think back to those hours and hours spent in the carrels and the exchanges we had after in the caf. The hours checking on a writer, trying to get the most meaning out of a poem or a symbol in a novel. 

Friendship sometimes are based on sharing important parts of life even though they may be sporadic, they are no less important for the quality of life.