Surprise Visit

I was working at my desk in my office this afternoon and Shay started getting restless. When I say working I am using that term very loosely. I actually was going through a box of old momentous, newspaper clippings, address book and photos. I was reading old letters from friends and looking at old camp pictures.
I did not find, but was reminded of a post card I received when I went to school in France. The first week of my summer in France was spent in Paris with my classmates. We stayed at a horrible little hotel in Pigalle, which was the red light district. Since we were young poor college students we tried to economize where we could. That meant drinking in the breakfast room of the little tourist hotel at night instead of going out.  
The night manager of the hotel was a young man named Rauole, from Tunisia and he used to buy us beers so we would stay up and talk to him. He wrote me a postcard and sent it to my parent’s house in London because that was the address I had in the hotel register, even though I was in Nantes, France at the time.  
My mother forwarded me the postcard with a little note on the side that said, “Who is Rauole?” No wonder because this is what the postcard said:
Hi Dana,
It is Rauole, your friend from the hotel at night. I hope you are well and will come back to Paris and see me. Hope to listen from you soon.
Post cards were like the texting of our time, except there was no privacy. No wonder my mother wondered who Rauole was. It was a much more provocative post card than was the reality.
As I was looking at this box of artifacts laughing about what my mother must have thought my door bell rang. I went upstairs with cell phone in hand so I could pretend I was on a call if it was the guy selling magazines who had come by earlier, but to my surprise it was my parents. They were in town to go to the doctors and just stopped by. Suddenly I felt like I was in school again and my parents were checking up on me. 
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. In reality my mother really wanted to discuss Thanksgiving plans because she likes to know what is going to happen in the future. I guess the good report from the doctor made her want to make many plans. It was fun to relive the things I saved, but even better to get to see my parents in real life today.