A Four Star Guest

She is a four-star guest, a relatively new friend met under business circumstances and converted to personal friendship over many dinners. This is her second trip to share in my nest.

Many of our ideas and memories of an American childhood overlap. In others our differences made us wonder if we were from the same species, but the exchanges only increased the respect. Neither doubted how the different conclusions were based on different information sets. If ideas differed that was fine because ideas are not the person.

But the long discussions, sometimes in the pajama-party style of our teenage years, didn’t make her a four-star guest. It was the basic consideration, sense of fun, curiosity to try whatever was offered that wins the honor. The ease with which we wondered hither and yon (a matter of great courage on her part letting me try and find our destinations).

Because this is the second visit, an artist friend who met her before, was pleased to see her again and made sure she had a dinner party while she was here.

When I left her to return to her normal life, and I to mine, the lack of her presence created a fissure in my day’s activities. The next day as I ran into people she had met, they all said, they hoped she came back another time. Me too.