Old Friends

We visited old friends last weekend. Our hostess has known my wife for close to 65 years. They were classmates not only in the small girls' school they attended in New York, from the fourth grade through high school graduation, but also at the same college and graduate school. They attended each other's weddings and kept in touch with one another, even after they both moved away from New York. After many years in Washington, our hosts retired to a New England village, where their home, set on a leafy promontory, overlooks the Atlantic and a small beach about 100 feet below. Every morning before breakfast, until late autumn, when the water and air become too cold, our hostess plunges into the sea and swims laps.

Our hosts' house is commodious, comfortable, and welcoming, reflecting their own generous spirit, a setting in which their relaxed and unforced hospitality made us feel immediately at home. They made us believe, during our four-day stay, that Benjamin Franklin's adage about fish and guests could never apply to us. Indeed they pressed us to stay longer, an invitation we would have loved to accept had we not appointments back in the city.

My wife and our hostess lived not far from one another when they were growing up, and they were often in each other's homes on weekends and after school. Our hostess not only remembers my wife's parents, she also remembers my wife's grandparents, who lived nearby and whose home was always open to my wife and her friends.

I've regretted not knowing my wife's grandfather, a busy obstetrician beloved of his patients, said to be a man of great charm and wit. Alas, when my wife was in the eleventh grade and he was in his early seventies, he was struck down by a disease that soon killed him. Today there are only a few people alive who remember him, but our hostess is one of them. This bond is among the many that bind her and my wife together.

Like siblings, old friends share many of our experiences and memories. Unlike siblings, who sometimes carry into adulthood the rivalries and resentments of childhood, our friends come with no such baggage. We choose each other freely and stay together by choice, and we give one another nourishing emotional shelter. We left our hosts wreathed in the nimbus of their friendship, which comforted us all the way home, as we rode away from their green woods and entered the canyons of New York.