Lending Hope
My friends father has cancer. Not the terminal kind, the still in chemo kind. The stage you pour all of your hope into, because that is what you have. The cancer and your hope.
She travelled from NYC and stopped up here first, soon she wil go on to LA. It is that respite before, the visit. I know it well. We have been friends for 15 years. Yet for the last 12 years have managed to not live in the same city, state, or country.
I credit her as the reason Cal even made it on my radar. Early memories of Pizza and beer in the dorm rooms, dinner parties with international students, and coffee houses in the rain. We can talk about a shared experience but stumble over what city it took place in.
Over the years we have corresponded via letters, then email, recently text. Since we don't communicate much in between, our visits are always one long conversation. Her invitations and my conference travel have allowed us to visit in NYC and Miami. When I moved away, she stopped to visit at my research site in Santa Barbara before we took a road trip up here to see the place I know live.
We have been through the career changes, the grad school choices, the good and the bad men in our lives, while always maintaining our friendship. Sometimes I think it is like that for everyone, but I know it is rare and why we can recognize it in each other.
This visit our first in SF has been full of cafes, window shopping, and planning, future trips. Things have come full circle talking about the slow food movement, politics, and how when we have our own families we would gather around the same rental on some foreign soil. She could teach them Italian and I Spanish.
She says she has a delicate constitution- mockingly. She has character, I tell her and integrity. At the end of the day, that is the only thing you can ask of in a friend, sister, and ally.
She travelled from NYC and stopped up here first, soon she wil go on to LA. It is that respite before, the visit. I know it well. We have been friends for 15 years. Yet for the last 12 years have managed to not live in the same city, state, or country.
I credit her as the reason Cal even made it on my radar. Early memories of Pizza and beer in the dorm rooms, dinner parties with international students, and coffee houses in the rain. We can talk about a shared experience but stumble over what city it took place in.
Over the years we have corresponded via letters, then email, recently text. Since we don't communicate much in between, our visits are always one long conversation. Her invitations and my conference travel have allowed us to visit in NYC and Miami. When I moved away, she stopped to visit at my research site in Santa Barbara before we took a road trip up here to see the place I know live.
We have been through the career changes, the grad school choices, the good and the bad men in our lives, while always maintaining our friendship. Sometimes I think it is like that for everyone, but I know it is rare and why we can recognize it in each other.
This visit our first in SF has been full of cafes, window shopping, and planning, future trips. Things have come full circle talking about the slow food movement, politics, and how when we have our own families we would gather around the same rental on some foreign soil. She could teach them Italian and I Spanish.
She says she has a delicate constitution- mockingly. She has character, I tell her and integrity. At the end of the day, that is the only thing you can ask of in a friend, sister, and ally.
posted by Lorena | 4:34 PM
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