Smiles und Sunshine

"We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine."
-- Simpsons episode 8F09, "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk"

Saturday December 27th, 2008 was a bright, sunshiny, pleasant day with clear skies and a gentle breeze wafting through the tree limbs. It was a fine, fine day to be out and about with friends and loved ones, and there was nothing at all to mar the experience. Smiles und sunshine, indeed.

Now, it may just so happen that one day you will run into someone who was in Natchitoches that day and will call me a loon, a liar, or something even worse. "Is he stupid? It was raining cats and dogs that day! It was awful! It dropped 30 degrees from noon to nightfall once the rain started, and we were lucky to get the fireworks in? What is he thinking?"

I'm thinking that that person didn't have the company I had. Because any day spent with my friend Sandy is full of smiles und sunshine, and no mere trifle of weather phenomenon can change that. Many moons ago we went to school and worked at camp together and were forged in the same fires, and it is the value of shared experience that means so much to me, both with her and with so many other friends. We caught up on what happened to so-and-so and whatever became of you-know-who. We swapped stories back and forth with another friend, some of them new to me. It is something I get to do much too rarely these days, and I murmur a word or two of thanks to God in His Heaven for making it happen.

I even got to meet a few new people along the way in the form of our friend's family. Her mother is an amiable spitfire of a lady who could probably chew me up and spit me out seven times before breakfast without breaking a sweat, and yet was gracious enough to accept me at her table for dinner, dessert, and very pleasant conversation. Her first words to me: "I hear you're a Williams."

I must have it tattooed on my forehead or something.

NOTE: Before I start to sound "woe is me" about it, it does occur to me that there are probably very few people who are consistently around the (non-family) people they experienced a certain stage of life with, and that it probably decreases the older they get. So I'm hardly alone in this regard. I'm also pretty sure that there are plenty of old friends I'd like to see on a much less frequent basis, so maybe a little absence isn't so bad after all.