This weekend I got reconnected with 3 more friends of 20+ years back. The first was my most bodacious friend Cris, from Brown also, who now lives and works in the DC area. More about her in my last post about the weekend, the piece de resistance, if you will. The other 2 friends I had not seen in 23 and 25 years, respectively, perhaps a year or two longer.
On Sunday, I had lunch and spent the afternoon with my friend Era, who I haven’t seen since I was in high school in Tokyo. I have always believe that my college friends always look the same to me, in part, because I see them at regular intervals (because I travel to the east coast, not because any of them every bother visiting me – eh hem) so I figured that even though I know we are all aging, I don’t see it because I see them so regularly.
Not so, apparently. When I saw Era, I could not believe that she looked EXACTLY the way she looked in high school, 23 years ago. Sure, she looks younger than her years and all that, but that’s how she looks to other people. To me, she looked exactly the same as the last time I saw her. I, thankfully, did not because the last time I saw her I looked like I had eaten a person. But otherwise I think I looked the same to her.
I met Era at the Adams Morgan/Woodley Park Metro station, and from there we walked past where she lives, past Dupont Circle and on to Georgetown, where we had lunch on the Potomac and enjoyed the balmy weather.
We caught each other up on what we’ve been doing the last 23 years, and I found that our experiences and the choices we made in life were similar. We have more in common than simply having gone to high school together, and our Selves have grown up in compatible ways. It was uplifting to discover that we weren’t friends by accident in high school, we chose each other because of a deeper affinity we did not yet know we had. It was moving for me to see her again, and it was like 23 years had not passed, maybe one or two instead.
It is often so with friends from childhood, it’s like the bond that we made kept us connected all these years in invisible and powerful ways, even when we did not know where the other was. Era sets her own path in life, makes her own choices and is thrilled with every one, regardless of whether it’s good or bad. I don’t think she even really thinks of any of her life as either good or bad, just … life in all its glory. I was inspired by the way she celebrates herself and by the compassion she has for herself, the way she would for a dear friend, and in that space I was able to forgive myself a little bit for choices I have made that did not serve me.
As we strolled and talked, I took pictures. If you want to see pictures from some DC neighborhoods, you can check out my Washington DC/Georgetown Flickr set. We also walked into a Georgetown open house, to see what sells for $1.2million around these parts.
On Monday, I met up with my friend Smriti at the National Museum of the American Indian (apparently, they prefer the term American Indian to Native American, so please adjust your PC glossary accordingly). We had lunch at the cafeteria there, which serves traditional American Indian fare, from different areas. A lot of it is gluten free because, well, Indians didn’t much grow wheat. Corn, yes, wheat, no. They probably weren’t fat and bloated, at least not until they started eating pasta and cookies. But I digress. Smriti and I went to high school together, also, but even before I met Era.
Smriti and I went to school together at Nairobi Academy in, you guessed it, Nairobi, Kenya. We were both heavy metal fans, and both loved and still love AC/DC. I mean, what’s not to love? To this day, whenever I listen to an AC/DC song, I think of Smriti and remember us head banging in our ghastly green and red Nairobi Academy uniforms and falling on the floor laughing hysterically.
Smriti wore thick glasses when she was in school, and now wears contacts. But other than no glasses and her hair is now long and smooth and beautiful instead of a mop of crazy curls, she looks exactly the same. I half expected her to show up in school uniform. In fact, I almost wish we still had them and got dressed up like crazy ladies. That would have been fun, and Smriti is still rock and roll, despite being happily married with two children so it’s quite likely she would have done it.
I lost touch with Smriti after we both left Kenya. I went to Japan, she moved to India with her family, in Mumbai (which at the time was still Bombay). I say moved rather than moved back because she had hardly lived there and did not really speak Tamil, the language of her region. She went to university there but didn’t like it at all, much like Era didn’t like being back in India for university, and I didn’t like being back in Italy after college.
I think it is a common experience for someone who has grown up outside of their own country and who has built their personality and their belief system having seen the world. It is difficult, when we return to our country of origin: we look like they do, we sound like they do, but we are different – the rules still apply to us, even though we don’t like the rules and the rules don’t make sense.
Smriti even told me that in order to fit in to her university she had to speak to her peers in an Indian accent (and by Indian here I do not mean American Indian but actual Indian). Smriti does not have an Indian accent otherwise.
Finally, her mother decided to take Smriti and her brother to the US to join the rest of her family. Soon after, Smriti’s father followed. They’ve been in the US, in the DC area, since 1990. And through Facebook, we found each other and were able to reconnect in person again on this trip. Once again, it was as if time collapsed and disappeared and we were just girlfriends having lunch and reminiscing about all the silly things we did when we were schoolgirls (one more person who has memories of all the questionable things I’ve done – oy!).
We talked about classmates and teachers, and in particular about a boy we both had a big crush on, though I was a bit less enthusiastic about him than Smriti. He was English, Richard, with brooding good looks and an athletic gift. I remember him as sometimes disarmingly sweet and open and at other times almost cruel. Many years later I wondered if perhaps he came from an unhappy home. Neither one of us knows what happened to that boy. He was either going to be really bad, or figure his shit out and be awesome. I hope the latter, otherwise it would surprise neither of us to discover that he died young.
Being with Smriti was like being with family. I could show up at her door tomorrow and be welcomed to stay and be at home and I’d be folded into the family like I had been with them all my life. It really does not get better than this.
