Glenbrooke News

By Elaine Macko,  author,  Glenbrooke resident

I had dinner last night with an old friend. By old, I mean we haven’t seen each other in 25 years. But I guess after all those years, we have also become old friends in the aging way as well.

I admit to being a bit nervous at seeing her again. Would we sit there in awkward silence, nothing to say, our lives having gone in such different directions that we no longer meshed? I needn’t have worried. From the moment we sat down in our quaint little restaurant, we never stopped sharing our lives of the past 25 years.

We met all those years ago at the Irvine Clubhouse where we would work our little bodies into perfection each night, chatting through our aerobics class. And then I asked her if she would like to watch Dallas on Friday night and that launched us into a more cemented bond. We would watch JR each week delighting in his dispensing of dastardly deeds. And then the cliffhanger would come and we’d pray to live through the summer so we could see the resolution in September. And then I moved away and we lost touch, though still hearing tidbits about each other from another mutual friend.

I found her on Facebook. Her new marriage had brought her to my area and we decided to meet. And so we sat across from each other savoring our meals—ahi for her, risotto for me—and shared our stories of parents—hers in their nineties, mine in their eighties—and I thought how lucky are we to still have our parents with us. We both have younger sisters living not too far away, and neither of us ever had children of our own but find great delight in nieces and a nephew. We both have new business ventures–writing for me and making and selling jams for her. And as it turns out, JR Ewing is still in our lives as we both watched the season premier of the new Dallas and admitted to being hooked once again.

The hours ticked away and then I had to leave to go get my sister at the airport. We walked outside and while my friend unlocked her bike for the short ride back to her house I thought how wonderful it is to reconnect with someone and find that after all that time we could just take a step and be right back where we started.

So I’ve coined a new phrase—BFF. No, not the best friends forever that is so over used, but best fermented friends, because like a good wine, I find that good friends only get better with age.

June 17, 2012