NY dinner

I spent a semester abroad in Ireland during my college days. I met someone there I'll call AF who was my friend. I never knew quite what to make our visits. We got together many Thursday nights at a pub and talked around various subjects that I don't remember to well and sampled the many drinks available. I became partial to cider.

I referred to her as my authentic native Irish person friend. She would say, "we prefer to call ourselves 'indigenous.'" She said if she ever changed the name of her band from "Vern's Pest Control" it would be "A____ from America" after me.

And that was about it. We talked about books a little I think and various things. I never quite felt I got deep into a friendship where I yanked out my soul for her or vice versa, but it was comfortable chatting together and kind of dancing around figuring out what to say. I really enjoyed it and was always a little awkward, wondering why she'd want to spend her time hanging out with me.

To her credit, we've stayed in touch all these years... first through occasional emails, then our blogs, and now Facebook. She and her girlfriend are in NY right now for the week and we managed to get our acts together so that I could go to dinner with them.

It was tricky. ND was with me and made conversation almost impossible. I felt sorry and a little embarrassed that I have not entirely figured out that I can't always bring ND to these things. And we most certainly didn't have time to get any deeper than we did before.

But there it is... we got together. She even brought a copy of my book (which she'd bought online) for me to sign.

Sometimes I make a friend, and then we go our ways, and then much later I meet her again and wish I could get to know this person better. I wonder if it's possible, or if our friendship is exactly as it should be now. In one of my poems I wrote, "You wave in my direction/and no is standing behind me." Is it that hard for me to accept a friendship as perfect enough? I'm too often surprised when someone wants to connect again. I rarely can believe I offered enough to make the friendship worth while for the other person.

But there it is. She contacted me from across the sea. We got together. It was nice. She'll read this blog. We'll remain in touch. And so on.