Too-Fast Visits

"It went so fast," I said to my friend Kara as I dropped her off at the airport at five-thirty this morning.

"It always does," she said, and that is true every time about a visit of a dear friend or family member--the days stretch out ahead of you and suddenly you're standing at the airport giving hugs and wondering when you'll see this dear one again.

Kara and I go way back--all the way back to sixth grade, Mr. Osborne's class, Nairobi, Kenya, when we became fast friends. She is the only friend from that period of my life (or college, for that matter--except Martin, who hangs around constantly) whom I have kept in contact with, but I can't imagine ever falling out of conversation with her.

We puzzle over the way life swings you in such wayward places and in such an unexpected manner. But when I am with her, I feel as though I am the sum of myself, truly still a kid and her best friend even though we've accrued the baggage particular to our own lives, picked up good people and carried them with us, been mapped by the places we have loved, the anger and loss we have encountered, all the efforts we've expended--since we were eleven or twelve and planning our lives under the branches of a favorite tree on a hill in Kenya. And then when I dwell with her again, the quintessential BEING together is the same--easy, natural, irreplaceable, full of grace.

"Look up!" we told Beatrix, and so she did.
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By the way, Kara, I lost my way on the return trip from the airport, and after such adventures as being on a bizarre business loop with multiple cargo exits, I found my way back home--almost four hours after I had left. I told Martin, "If you ever become me, you will be so confused." But it was worth every wrong turn to spend the extra hour with you in the wee hours of the morning. Thank you for coming, dear friend!