Never Enough Time With Friends

It has been a great visit with my friends of 46 years, Nancy and Karen. We became great friends in boarding school, stayed in touch in college, attended each other’s weddings, gone to many reunions together and visited each other’s home through the years. Getting to spend some solid days and nights together here in Maine just makes me miss being around them all the time even more.

There is a wonderful sameness in our senses of humor that only comes with so many shared experiences at critical junctures of our development. We can finish each other’s sentences like old spouses, even though we only see each other occasionally. We can always pick right up where we left off no matter how many years there are between physical visits.

Today was a fun day with the highlight being a lunch at Warren’s house and tour of his HoJo collection. Nancy had been a HoJo girl one summer when she was in high school so she took great glee in seeing all the memorabilia Warren had. The amazing thing is he had the weather vane from the very restaurant where Nancy worked.

Before we could go to Warren’s we had to make the big trip to Beth’s Farm Market to get gifts to take to Warren’s as well as some mementos for Karen and Nancy to take home. We bought so much stuff we pretended we were not together because we didn’t want to be accused of cleaning them out.

With a full car we headed over to Rockport and looked at the beautiful houses and then headed to clam cove and the best tuna melts on earth. Warren welcomed us in his new Howard Johnson’s t-shirt. Everyone got the tour and Nancy paid special attention as so much of his collection was exactly like she used at HoJo’s when she was sixteen.

Before we arrived I had predicted what we would be having to for lunch and like Carnac the Magnificent, I got every item he served right down to the make of Lemonade. I’m not saying Warren is predictable, but just like Howard Johnson’s you are going to get the same great quality product no matter which restaurant you stopped into.

After lunch Warren showed Karen and Nancy the rest of his house including many antiques ready for him to take into 10 Mechanic to sell. I saw a number of things I think Carter might like.

It was a sweet visit of old boarding school friends and Warren waved us good bye as we drove out of his driveway on our way to our owl’s head home. We stayed in tonight and had an easy fried rice for dinner, finally eating our tiny raspberry pie we bought yesterday from the store that had just fruit pies made by a fourth generation pie maker.

Life in Maine feels simpler, sweeter and slower, especially with such wonderful old friends. So glad we decided 46 years ago that we liked each other and we still do now.