Late afternoon, two beautiful young men from my past came to visit.
When I first lived in France, I met an American woman named Bonnie, she was my saving grace to surviving that first year of feeling utterly lost and overwhelmed in Paris.
Bonnie was with her husband, who was in Paris doing research at the Institute Pasteur. Bonnie was pregnant with her first child, Ben. Two years later Bonnie and I were pregnant at the same time: I was pregnant with Chelsea and she was pregnant with Jon. A few months after Chelsea was born my friend moved back with her family to the USA. One of the difficult things about being an expat is having foreign friends come and go.
Ben has been working on his masters in Aix. He will complete it this week. But I hadn't seen Jon since he was two years old. Today they came for lunch plus Jon's girlfriend Iris, they came from the States to visit.
I love when the past comes to the present and the time doesn't stand in the way. I only wished Chelsea, Sacha and Bonnie, her husband Tom, and their daughter Lesley could have been here as well.
Good memories swirled around, as new memories were planted.
As we shared lunch under the thick canopy of jasmine, nature's umbrella, it started to rain.
The shower brought a delicious cool breeze, the jasmine perfumed us.
And their we enjoyed each other's company.
I loved every raindrop, every jasmine flower, every word, every second of gathering those two beautiful young men from my past to this moment.
