When I came to City of Ever-Available Food and Endless Desserts, I got to reconnect with one of my closest friends from grad school - the first one I made there, actually. She was living with her husband just a hop, skip, and jump away as she finished her PhD. Our reunion was exuberant and joy-filled. We had tea the first weekend we saw each other, and the next, too. We celebrated Mardi Gras together and encouraged each other through Lent. She applied for jobs and confessed she didn't see herself staying in City of Desserts but Also Hassles. Then the word came that she had been offered a job - a good job - in the City Where the Water Bends. And she and her husband are off to the place I just left! I'm both sad and joy-full.
Tonight was the night before they moved. The storage folks came during the day to collect their things and ship them south, and then a bunch of friends gathered for one last good bye dinner, outside our City of Desserts and Also Hassles, right on Steel Grey River, which was peachy-blue and turquoise. Even though I didn't know everyone there we were at ease with each other right away. As it turned out, my friend and her husband aren't the only ones moving: one friend is going to Alaska, a newly-minted MSW. Another has graduated and is headed overseas. The only other friend who's staying here has started a new job on the other end of the city, and I'm still new here. It was a beautiful dinner: good scenery, good food, yes; but more than that good hearts, compassionate for one another, taking joy in one another, excited at what was to come and so grateful for what had been.
I'm thinking now of the professor my friend and I had together; he had a few catchphrases he'd say over and over in his Irish lilt (made subtle by years in America). I'm thinking about my favorite one:
There's an ebb to every tide but the tide of God's grace.
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