Finding Old Friends and Enjoying Life

Man, time flies. Life is so busy. It's been six days since I posted anything here. It seems to be a time of renewing old acquaintances. Chintu has been electronically reconnecting with several old classmates. Over the last few months Patricia has reconnected with a couple of people from her distant past. Tanya has heard from old friends in recent times as well. A few days ago, through a message on classmates.com I have been corresponding with an old, old friend. Jimmy and I met when we were in third grade together and lived very near one another. We were friends all through high school, but as the story so often goes, after graduation we lost touch completely. While there are those from my past with whom I would not enjoy reconnecting, I have enjoyed catching up with him. That is the finding old friends part of this....

The enjoying life part has to do with something Chintu said in a half-asleep voice a few minutes ago. We had watched four episodes of "Queer as Folk" on DVD (isn't Netflix great?), and he had fallen asleep with his head on my shoulder while I was watching music videos of Rufus Wainwright, because the last episode we watched had his song "Poses" at the end. When I finished, I woke him so he could go to bed and wouldn't get the stiffneck. As he groggily undressed for bed, he said how romantic it was for him to sit there and fall asleep leaning on me...and how he had "seen" several good dreams while he slept there. ("seen" dreams is his version of my "had" dreams). For us, it is truly the "little things" that make our relationship so fufilling and contented. I am still in awe of this wonderful man with whom I am privileged to share every day of my life. He is simply amazing.

Having such great friends in my life is such an awesome thing, too. Even though I don't see most of them as much since I moved, they are all an important part of my...our....life. Yesterday, Tanya took me out to dinner for my birthday before we went to the EAHS lecture featuring Callie Lyons on the topic of the chemical C8. Tomorrow evening, a wonderfully diverse group of our beloved friends will gather with us to celebrate both our birthdays, mine just past and Chintu's coming up the day after Valentine's Day. There will be "Americans", East Indians, a Columbian, and a Chinese.

Here is a picture of Chintu and I with his/our Chinese friend, Lei, at the Chinese Spring Festival at OU last Saturday. (Not bad for a camera phone picture that I took of us, huh?)Attending that event was such a thrill for me. I enjoyed every moment of it...even though I did not, of course, understand the words of the songs on the program, I certainly felt the heart of several of them, proven by the tears with which my eyes brimmed.

May all who read feel peace and a connectedness to, and an appreciation of, all peoples...Namaste...