Today, I got up at 8:30, showered, and drove to Northampton in the pouring rain.
Why?
To have brunch with Erin. (And Lauren and Jenn… but mostly Erin… I see the other two all the time.)
I don’t think she fully believes that I made the almost 2 hour drive there (and back) just to see her. But I did.
She’s one of those people I don’t see often but whose company I thoroughly enjoy every time I do.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen her. I thought it had been over a year, when she gave me her CD, We Will Become Like Birds, which became the only thing I listened to through the 6+ weeks that my allergies went on hiatus after my divorce while living at Jenn and Lauren’s (hello, run-on sentence), but I’ve seen her since… I think in April. Anyway, it’s been a bit, and every time she’s been around Providence, I’ve not been.
And I’m moving, and I’ve got an internal list of people I’d like to see before I go, and she was on it.
And, and, and…
I had the best breakfast burrito EVER at The Green Bean (how is it possible that any store/restaurant doesn’t have a website? It’s almost 2009, for the love…) You should eat there. It’s on Main Street. It’s delish.
Then we went for a walk. Or tried.
We wend for a ride in the Sprinter, the awesome van that Erin drives.
The walk part didn’t turn out so well. The path sort of looked like an ice rink. But I did take the best picture ever. Maybe not ever, but they all look happy, and Lauren’s actually looking at the camera…
Half way home, I decided I needed to go to the LL Bean outlet (fueled by the commercial for it I heard on the radio.) So I re-routed and made my way to Mansfield.
And then, while perusing the LL Bean outlet, I heard Erin in the background, just barely over the noise of post-Christmas shoppers, like deja-vu, over the store’s music system.
To the stars, to the stars!
Oh, we are lit within
By all we’ve been
And by all we care to be
It was like a sign from God, if I believed in such things. (Once, when I was 16, I thought I was having a conversion experience while driving home on 146 south and saw the floating blue cross (which is firmly attached atop a church off Smith Street)… thinking that perhaps God was warning me against being gay, being that I was on my way home from my girlfriend’s house.)
So… I don’t believe in signs from God. But I do believe in being nice to each other in the world. So yes, Erin, I really did sit in the car for 4 hours today so I could have a burrito with you (or I could have a burrito and you could have whatever you had with that cute little biscuit on top of it), and it was totally worth the drive.
