A Chaucer seed

"There's a new American couple in town you have to meet," Louise said. We were sitting in the sun drinking coffee at La Noisette with some Brit friends. The sky behind the church was brilliant blue.

I was instantly leery.

There are some 318 million Americans. Their nationality does guarantee bonding any more than I assume that the lovely Swedish couple on our street will fall in love with our new Swedish friends, an economist and an artist. They may or may not for reasons that have nothing to do with their passports.

To be friends there does need to be some commonality. Nationality is just one...others include some overlapping interests.

This does not mean I want all my friends to be mirror images of me...I have enough time with me...and if I limited myself to writers who grew up in Reading, MA and became Swiss, I would be terribly, terribly alone . . . and BORED!

Mostly what I like in friends is COW.*

• Curiosity
• Openness
• Warmth

Passion for anything is plus whether or not I share it. Sometimes it is better when I don't because I learn to appreciate something new.

However, curiosity stoked, Rick and I knocked at their door at lunch time saying, "We aren't planning to stay but Louise said we should meet."

Dropping in on anyone, known or unknown, is un-Swiss to the highest power. It is not in Rick's social bag of tricks either.

It became a small world moment.

They are from Upper State New York
He is from Upper State New York

They are journalists
We are/have been journalists

They graduated from the same university (a big one) the same year he did.

She did medieval studies. I studied medieval literature.

On the street as we talked, now quiet because in France lunchtime is still sacred and nearby stores are closed, the COW principle was at work.

She and I struggled to remember the first lines of Canterbury Tales in Middle English.

I remembered them as we walked back to the house to our own lunch, convinced that we might have the seeds of a new friendship here.

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

*In this case it does NOT stand for COW Cranky Old Woman which I sometimes am.