California: Old Friends

My first full day here I spent biking around Oakland and Berkeley, doing some errands (those American things that are easier to get here, like ibuprofen and dramamine...) and my happy bookstore-and-record-store pilgrimages.

Biking up Shattuck Ave called to mind a time – years ago – hanging out with my friend Marisa there, getting gelato somewhere along Shattuck and laughing over the giant sculpture of a tuning fork in the middle of the road.

So that evening, I shot Marisa an email just to say, Hey, I'm in Berkeley and thinking of you!

Marisa and I go way back (or maybe as way back as you can go with someone when you're still in your twenties...) We have Ithaca connections (we met doing a community theater production when I was a senior in high school) and Berkeley connections (she's from California and was living here again by the time I spent that summer in Berkeley) and even Thailand connections (she was the one who first taught me some Thai before my exchange year there, and I visited her six years ago, when she'd just moved to Thailand – where she still lives now.)

Since Marisa lives in Thailand and I live in Germany and we each only come back to the US at most once a year, and not even usually to the same parts of the country, you can imagine we don't see each other often. So it was more just a whim to write and say hi, even though she was half a world away.

...Except that within three minutes, Marisa wrote back with the subject line, "URGENT! Hi from Berkeley!" She was visiting here too.

These are the kinds of coincidences that happen to me.

I only had a left day in Berkeley before heading to other parts of the state; Marisa was leaving for Thailand again at the end of the week and trying to see friends and wrap up important errands before she went, so she didn't have time until evening.

I spent the day working from a café; my mom dropped by in the afternoon, then my dad came by with his old friend Ruel, and we sat around outside the café and I got to hear even more of my dad and Ruel's crazy travel stories from their youth. (Crazy as in, How are you still alive despite all that?)

Then Marisa joined us, and we all went out to dinner – she's friends with my parents too, but hadn't seen them since the last time they were in California, nine years ago!

We all had an intensive catching-up conversation, then Marisa and I went on to another café after my parents turned in for the night, and continued to have an intensive catching-up conversation. And it really did feel like we caught up and connected even though it was only one evening.

For me, it was a reminder that some people will always be dear and important no matter how far away they are – and that it actually is possible to feel a strong connection to someone even when years intervene between the rare times you see each other face to face.