January 2: The Friend I Hadn't Seen In 10 Years

My January 2nd was interesting. I stayed up into it, slept at 4 and awoke at 7:30, so that by the time I was heavily in the car in the cool winter morning driving in the sunshine, I didn't really know what was going on. My head set off on a tilt and was spinning and all I knew was that I was meeting someone in two and a half hours for breakfast, and then getting on a plane that evening. What use was I?

Breakfast was special because I was meeting up with an old friend... a friend who seems to have preceded me in all I've done: living in San Diego and moving to Europe, albeit she married a Spaniard and stayed put in Madrid for six years. But after our times in high school together, and traveling to Guatemala together, and going to summer camps together, the last time I could recall seeing her was in 2003. And here we were finally in the same place again in 2013.

What I liked most was her compassion, and her honesty. I felt light-years behind her in so much, and she let me be candid and ask questions and get real answers for once, not padded answers from friends who feel they need to hold up a front for me. She let me question her and co-contemplate life at a time when my head was a fuzzy question mark whirling faster than I could go. And also, it was just reassuring to see someone after so long and still have a connection and something to talk about. She was something of an unexpected person of the day.