We four old friends, who worked together many years ago, decided to get together. We live on the Jersey shore, NYC, upstate NY, & Pennsylvania. Chatham, NJ, turned out to be 1 hour & 4 minutes from each of us. After a few days of crowing about exploring the dark wilds of the Garden State, I realized a friend of mine lives in Chatham. It did seem suddenly more possible to get there.
And I did. And we hugged & laughed & told stories for a few hours, & decided not to wait so long again. Even though we know each other as colleagues, all the stories we told were personal: getting caught in a flood, one of us on crutches, that sort of thing. It's how we know we're friends not merely coworkers, & why the afternoon was so pleasant. And that each of us was central ~ not a star & 3 acolytes. No one had aged, which was weird, but there was a lot we'd forgotten, which eventually did make me believe how long it had been. Although I do NOT believe it's been 30 years.
A deeply restorative afternoon in a cute town. Is it the suburbs if it's an hour away on the train?