this ‘n that
by Anne Vargas annevargas3@gmail.com
O
ne of the best parts about traveling the way we do is the people we meet. Understandably, many of those encounters are short term “shipboard” relation ships but others continue due to the ease of email and some have cemented to the point of seeing one another again. A recent weekend trip to the Bay Area gave us the chance to visit some especially nice new friends, “the Silver” in that song. We spent a night in Los Gatos with a couple we met on our last cruise who insisted we visit. They have a unique and fascinating life they had been very modest about (I felt like Alice in Wonderland who fell through the Rabbit Hole to another world) but they made us feel very welcome in their enchanting home. From there we went to Carmel to visit a couple we met on another cruise nine years ago. We have estab lished a close relationship since then and see them several times a year, some thing we look forward to because they feel like old friends now. But the third night was special…a reunion with two couples who really are dear friends of old, and most assuredly “the Gold”.
We were all newlyweds when the six of us met in 1962, three young couples navigating together the newness of married life. There were funtoremem ber days of Tuna Casserole and Jello salad meals, of pooling food before payday and serving popcorn while we learned to play bridge for affordable entertain ment. There were other couples there too, and occa sionally someone would splurge and host a “Between the Sheets” party which is some sort of out landish drink that none of us remember how to make and can’t believe we drank but we felt very adult about it at the time. During those initial two years together the first (of the eventual seven between us) children were born and we support ed one another through childbirth, colic and Dr. Spock. Our husbands were all in the Army, two of them there for a brief two years while the third (mine) opted for a 30year military career. While we were sub sequently wandering the world as military nomads, the other two men joined the corporate world, one on the east coast, one on the west. Despite the fact that (this ‘n that page 38) June • 2014 • 37