Old Friend Tony

Last Saturday, I woke up late. Around 7:30 am. It was wonderful. I thought, “I have nothing to do, I have nothing to do, yeah!”

Then the girl knocked on my bedroom door and said, “Are we going to the farm?”

I stumbled downstairs and I stood staring at the stove saying to myself, “What was I going to do today?” I was reaching to the deepest part my sleep laden brain, attempting to put my day together in a coherent matter. The girl was putting her riding boots on while I was muttering to myself. She said, “I think you should rest.”

I said, “Huh?”

She said, “I think you should rest today. You’ve been working a lot, you’ve been driving us all over the place. I think you should rest after you drive me to the farm.”

I stood in the middle of my kitchen with my barefeet on the cold floor and thought, “She knows, she realizes, she cares.” I was so touched.

What does that have to do with my Old Friend Tony? Well, I don’t know. I just know that as I sat down to my computer after getting back from the farm, I see an email pop up that says, “I’m in town. Can we get together?”

I emailed back immediately that I insisted he came over for dinner. Then I started a crab casserole for Neighbor Sue. The boy says, “I have band practice tonight.” I said, “Okay.” And I thought about the tile I had to purchase that day and the trip to the tack store. So goes my day of doing nothing.

In any case, Old Friend Tony and I worked together while in Germany. I had not seen him in 15 years. And so four kids, one divorce, one re-marriage, several moves, and many jobs later, we sit down to catch up. It was a wonderful delightful evening, filled with old memories and funny stories. It was also filled with acronyms I had not heard in years, MCE, JSTARS, JTAMDO…I almost missed my full time working days. Wait, I do work full time. Just at several part time jobs. Never mind. I meant, working full time in a career, without kids.

Yeah.

I asked him what he wanted for dinner. Since I was already doing crab, I was going to do more crab in white wine sauce with pasta. He said he was allergic to seafood. What? After all these years, I never knew. He and I were in Segovia, Spain together for about three weeks and he ate suckling pig. How could he be allergic to anything? I made chicken with pasta instead.

What’s my point? I don’t know. It was just a nice serendipitous event on a day that didn’t work out to be anything like I had hoped when I dragged myself out of bed. Rather, it was much better.

I know this a rare, rather lengthy post without many photos. I would understand if you didn’t get this far. After all, who has the time?

Posted on Gayle’s Monday Memories.