Friends
back to Ramblings

You haven’t heard from me in a while and for that I sincerely apologize.  I only have two excuses.  The first is that one of our horses somehow hurt a leg and is requiring daily care, the provision of which is against my religion.  The good news is that her injury is less severe than first thought and she will, we hope, be well much sooner than expected.  It still means, however, that she remains confined and that I am shoveling you-know-what on a daily basis (normally our horses are “free range” and, although they can come and go in the barn as they wish, they have the good manners to poop elsewhere).

My real excuse, however, is that I have been preparing for the arrival of my best friend in the whole wide world, Queenabelle, from France.  She and I can have more fun than a barrel of monkeys, even when we are doing absolutely nothing.  When we actually do something … well, all heck breaks loose and we laugh until our stomach muscles hurt.

Her coming to America is a huge event and has involved lots of planning.  After spending a few days with me, she will fly back east to spend some time with her son who is studying there (don’t even ask why she didn’t go there first, and then come here – it’s all very complicated.)  She’ll return to my house and then I will take her to the Monterey/Carmel area.  After that comes the big event – the reunion of la societé des Tammys, a group of us who lived in France together. 

Our 2003 reunion

This is the first time we will be together since 2003.  We are facing one major disappointment:  one of our group of five cannot make the trip.  But the bonds that link us are the ones you read about in those emails that get forwarded repeatedly around the internet – about friends or sisters or what-have-you’s.  I’m not the sentimental sort and just delete ‘em.  But I have to tell you, with this group there is a connection that is both deep and somehow comforting.  Even though we live miles and miles apart from each other, and may not speak to one another for months at a time, when something important happens we reconnect and it’s like no time at all has passed.

For the four of us in the US, it all started when we moved back home and struggled with the transition back to life here in America.  We quickly discovered that no one but another “ex-pat” had a clue about what we had been through (living years in a foreign country), or what we were going through re-adjusting to life aux Etats-Unis.  We quickly discovered that we had only each other to lean on.  We burned up the phone lines the first few months after each of us moved back, all of us asking the same questions of each other and finding comfort in the knowledge that what we were feeling was normal, and that we had someone to talk to about it.  Queenabelle served as our anchor back to our experiences in France, and our bridge to life back home.

I think the combination of the incredible experiences we shared in France, and the shared “transitioning” upon our return, has helped cement our connection.  During all of this time we have been there for each other during the difficulties and joys of raising children, the marriages, the births, the inevitable illnesses, the new jobs, the lost jobs, the aging parents, the lost pets, and all the ups and downs that life has to offer.