Last night an old college friend was in town, from the other Portland. We went out to dinner and talked about sustainable forestry and how he asked his fiance to marry him and the ways we are different now than when we were 22. We talked about friendships and dogs and how people behave at weddings. He spent the night, and we had oatmeal together before he went off to his meeting in a drab conference room in a hotel near the mall.
The night before last another old friend was in town, from the remote rural woodsy place I lived after college. I cooked fish with ginger and garlic and soy and mushrooms and sesame oil and shallots and lime. Outside it was sleeting and snowing and the wind was rattling the windows, but we ate fish and brown rice and steamed spinach and talked about music and mud season and Belfast. We talked about opening our hearts and New York City and letting our subscriptions to the New Yorker Magazine lapse and global warming. He was up before I woke, to catch an early flight to Florida, but the storm cancelled it, so we went to a diner and had eggs and talked about the people now living in the house I used to live in.
Comments