Good People Always Are

When I thought about having a relaxing getaway to Maine I envisioned sitting on my friend’s porch over looking Clam Cove in the cool north air, eating lobster, playing cards, stitching many ornaments, telling stories and laughing, laughing, laughing. Somehow only a few of those things happened, but I am certainly not disappointed.
When Warren and I discussed what we might do during my visit I had one request, to try and see a very good Ethel Walker friend, Julie Williams now Julie Wagoner, whom I had not been in contact with for 35 years. I knew from Warren that she worked in Bath and he had seen her just a few years before. The fact that I had not kept in touch is no indication of how much I had loved her when we went to school together, but like so many people we know when we are young, we just lost contact.
Warren and I hatched up a hair brained scheme that we would surprise her at her bank where she was a commercial loan officer under the auspices that we needed a loan. I was a little worried that she might not be at work if we just showed up so Warren called the bank and asked a co-worker of Julie’s if she was going to be in, but to please keep the secret of our arrival. It was a good thing we did that because she was out the day we planned to visit and had to change our plans.
Today we drove to Bath and waited in the lobby of her Bank while the receptionist asked her to come down to see some customers. Despite the years she recognized us and I would have known her anywhere, she had not aged one day, let alone 35 years.
After she got over the original shock she showed us around and introduced us to her co-workers before we took her to lunch. Julie was still the kind and thoughtful person I knew as a teenager. She told us all about her family and her work. Julie, like me loved to do crafts, even at a young age and she told us she was still making quilts, like her mother.
She told us how she collects old featherweight sewing machines that are particularly coveted by quilters because they are light and easy to transport when going to quilting classes. One day her mother called her and told her about a 90 year old woman who she knew who had a feather weight that had belonged to her mother she might want to sell. Julie called her to say she heard about her machine. The woman talked lovingly about how much her mother adored this machine. 
Julie, who already had a couple of sewing machines and really did not need another asked how much she wanted. The price the woman gave her was too good to pass up so Julie said she would take it on one condition, that the woman would give Julie a copy of a picture of her mother so she could attach it to the case of the machine and think of her whenever she used it.
Julie asked the woman if she wanted her to bring her the money that day or the next week and the woman said, “Come today, it is so much better to do something hard faster.” As she told me this story I thought how typically thoughtful of Julie to come up with the perfect way to ease this old woman’s pain of selling her mother’s prized sewing machine by assuring her that her mother will never be forgotten, when the woman was not even asking for that.
It is so wonderful to know that a person I thought was the highest caliber human being when she was a teenager, really was and continued to be. The years apart were merely a blink of an eye. We promised to not wait another 30 years and try and see each other again next year.