Hello Old Friend

When I was at Ikea with Mom a few weeks ago, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone who looked a lot like my old friend Audrianna, but then I thought: no, we just see people we miss. I do that all the time.

But a fews days later I thought: it makes a lot of sense that Audrianna Jones would live in Portland…and a quick google search yielded instant results, since she has such a unique first name (except she has a new last name!).

Audrianna and I met in our teens, when we were both “summer girls” on Chicago’s North Shore.

Here we are at O”hare dropping Audrianna off to go back to Idaho, circa 1988.

Then the following (? Aud help me remember this right) summer, we then backbacked around Europe together, sleeping in hostels (and once in a train station, if I recall correctly! And we didn’t wear bike helmets either–!). It was so memorable. We went to London, Paris, The Netherlands and Belgium.

And then we both got busy in college. Audrianna went to Hong Kong and the Netherlands and I lost track of her…

What a delight to find out we both have boys; her youngest close enough in age to play with D. We all got together a couple weekends ago and caught up. She has two boys, Canyon, who is almost 5, and Oakley, who is 3. We sat outside for a brunch and did a toast with sparkling cranberry juice (D loved it–his very first fizzy drink!).

It’s funny how with good friends, even those you haven’t talked to in about 20 years, you just pick up where you left off. Audrianna brought a photo album/scrapbook she had from the summer we met and we reminisced about the people we knew then, the adventures we had taking the kids into the big city, the movies we saw…the spouses thought that was pretty hilarious (and check out Maida’s crazy new-wave hair!!)…

I told my Mom it was like having family in town. It’s a nice feeling to know someone who knows you so well is so close by.

Playdates and other new adventures await us!