365 True Things: 110/Friends

Today we met up with some old, old friends, Jan and Catharina de Kat.

Well, they are actually younger than us. But we've known them a long time. Since graduate school at Berkeley, which was in the early 1980s.

Then we moved to Illinois, and they moved to Holland. Since then, we've seen them . . . twice? three times?

I do remember the last visit they made here in—they reckon—2003. And I went and visited them in Holland, apparently in April 2004. I'm still racking my brain to remember just why I was passing through their neck of neatly manicured Dutch suburbia. I know that on that visit I went to world-famous Keukenhof (of the amazing tulip gardens ☝) as well. But where was I coming from? Where was I going to? I'm pretty sure I was traveling on my own. My memory fails me entirely . . .

I could write a post about that phenomenon, but I'd as soon not.

What I wanted to write about today is just how lovely it is to meet up with friends after a long gap, not really having had much contact in the meantime, and to feel like we'd just seen each other a few months or even weeks ago. That wonderful feeling of connection and mutual interests. Today we also got to remeet their three children, Annelien, Julian, and Helena, now 27, 25, and 23—mature young people pursuing education and/or careers in medicine (gynecology), naval architecture (following in his father's footsteps), and international law, respectively.

Several years ago, the family moved to Copenhagen. Jan, though Dutch, was born in Indonesia and spent some of his youth in Australia. Catharina was born in Canada and holds U.S. (as well as Canadian and Dutch) citizenship. The three children, who are U.S. and Dutch citizens, all live in Holland now, while their parents will remain in Denmark until Jan retires—from a job that takes him at regular intervals to Houston.

The international lives of ex-pats boggles my mind. (I've got another friend who's German/Belgian/Italian, and who it is similarly fluidly easy to meet up with every so often.) I envy them in many ways, the richness of so many cultures. I just get to dabble, when I travel.

But despite their different lives, I am also reminded that we're not so very different: we thrive on the same pleasures, we have similar values, we have so many connections. That's a beautiful thing.