Friday, March 14, 2014

Reunions are Always a Good Thing....


in my book and some are better than others. All the people in these photos used to live in my old neighborhood. All five of them left much earlier than Mr. Kenju and I did, and it had been 11 years since we saw them last (except for the woman in the striped sweater.) The pretty woman in the blue top is also named Judy (and her husband is also Jim). She was a particularly good friend of mine back in the early days (1982 till they left in 1991.) Isn't it odd how I have aged and she hasn't?  I should have asked her secret! The last time we all saw each other was at a funeral, which certainly isn't the best time to chat and catch up on each others lives. We met last night, and while it was great while it lasted, it wasn't long enough. As Judy said in an email to me this morning, "It was as though we had never been apart..." and I had to agree. We started talking as old friends do, and except for some interruptions, we could have gone on and on for hours. I hope that we will get the chance to do that sometime soon, with no one to butt in....lol  We had a wonderful selection of hors d'oeuvres, thanks to our hostess Nancy!

My favorite story about this couple is the time Mr. Kenju, I and our younger daughter went on a cruise to Nassau. We were on the main street there, after cruising out of Miami the night before, and we saw shoe store after shoe store  (Those Bahamanians know what women want!!) and Mr. Kenju was upset because my daughter and I had gone into the first three shoe stores we had come to and he "was not about to spend all his time in Nassau shopping for shoes!!"  We stomped off down the street toward the pipe and tobacco shop - his shopping choice - and while he went inside to browse, my daughter and I sat down on a corner bench to wait. 

After about 10 minutes, I heard some familiar voices coming around the corner, and lo and behold, there were Jim and Judy and their son. Now imagine our surprise. We lived 1/8 of a mile apart and here we were in Nassau, having gotten there on ships, and neither of us knew the others were going on a cruise. It seems odd in retrospect, that neither of us discussed our plans. They had their son with them and he knew my daughter, as she had been one of his sitters for several years. So we went to a cafe and had drinks, and made plans to go out that night. We joined up later that evening at a casino, and went to a show which, as we found out while the show was in progress, featured topless showgirls, a la Las Vegas. Our daughter and their son's eyeballs popped out for about 10 minutes - after that it was sort of boring - lol. 

When it was time to return to the ships, we all took a cab together. The cabs that run the route between the casinos and the ships do so at breakneck speed, since the faster they are, the more fares they can get in an evening. The other Jim sat in the front seat and white-knuckled it all the way back, since the driver was driving through fairly steep "stone canyon walls" on either side of the road, at speeds that were far too fast for us. When he got onto the deck near our gangplank, he raced all the way to the end of the dock and was going so fast that we despaired of his being able to stop before plunging into what we imagined were shark-infested waters, but he did. And we emerged, shaking and white-faced, with legs so rubbery that it was hard to walk. 

At that point, I was happy to get back on the ship  - since motion-sickness was preferable to death by taxi-flying - or drowning.  (And yes, I was using scopolamine patches to control sea-sickness)

My bucket list has one request regarding this couple:  that we get to have some quality time with them before we all get too old to enjoy it. Let's hope that happens!

4 comments:

OldLady Of The Hills said...

How wonderful that you were able to visit with these dear old friends....Nothing like having a shared history with lovely people....And your running into them on that trip was AMAZING! And the trip to the boat--Harrowing, to say the least! I hope you get to see them again, soon!

Granny Annie said...

That is such a neat story about you all ending up in the same place without having discussed a detail. The secret to not aging these days is hair color.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a wonderful reunion! What a wild story about running into them on the cruise. A lovely history of friendship.

Gilly said...

How amazing to meet your friends in Nassau! And I can imagine that taxi ride - we had a very similar one on one of the Canary Islands going back to our ship - we wondered if we would get there alive!

Reunions are always good!