Decades in Mid-May showers

So a couple weeks back I took my first non-emergency, non-unemployment, non-illness, non-family death week off in twenty years  (almost twenty years exactly).

I flew on a plane (something I had also not done in twenty years, almost exactly).

Spent the better part of a week with a friend who I hadn't seen (in almost twenty years, exactly).


And for a few brief days it was like being young again.


Sitting around, smoking and joking, watching movies, flirting.

Pretending that we were both still in our late teens/early twenties, and that the world wasn't the horror show that we both know it to be now.

Pretending that neither of us had lived through the last two decades.

Mapping our similarities, even after so many many years.

Noting the differences, in ourselves and in each other.

Trading our stories.

Our bad habits and noble dreams.

Big wins and close calls, missed chances and irrecoverable loves, victories and failures, persistence and strength and joy and deep personal loss.

Probably the best platonic week I've had in over a decade.

Funny how time can be at times.

Hope we can do it again in twenty years.