Friends from LA

Someone said if you live in New York people will always come see you. How true that is. It seems, not an exaggeration, we've had friends arriving for visits (not staying with us) to the city every week since moving here. I've found my calendar full of lunches, dinners with friends that I knew from LA. December, a magical time here, seems to be a busy month for us as more people arrive to the city.

This continued connection with our former life is nice in a sentimental way. It's allowed us to feel less cut off from a life that had been our entire existence until just a short time ago. It is as if both doors, the one of our current life, and the one of our past, are both open, revealing to us our future and past simultaneously. What's been amazing is how these old relationships are being re-imagined with this physical distance. Longtime friendships, those that extend beyond ten years, feel more anew, a different intimacy getting established. It's as if this physical distance has each of us reevaluating the importance of the bond, thereby making the relationship a priority. The usual empty promises of, 'let's get together,' are now becoming a thing of the past as each realizes such casual assurances about a future bond is not so assured anymore. Why hadn't we made such concerted efforts when we the distance separating us was a mere few miles and not the thousands?

I see how this new focus to old relationships will chart a course much different than if we had stayed nearby. These relationships that may not have survived the affection and annoyances of daily contact will now remain intact, insuring a longevity that neither of us may have imagined. My old friendships are just another layer to the many layers that make a life feel whole. New friends, those becoming more familiar every day, are now the calls that come more often. Those calls from out west are the happy surprises on those days when you need such a call to lift you up.

As another friend arrives this week, and we head to a dinner to see them this weekend, I marvel at our luck in having friends that would make a trip to this magnificent city, and call us out for dinner.