A muse on an afternoon with a friend.

A muse on an afternoon with a friend.

Some posts have background music.

All I hear in my head right now is Mick Jagger singing and the music from “Waiting on a Friend.”

Take a deep breath and sit a second in that song and that was my afternoon.

We lived in a house together during law school. We studied. A lot. Alone in our rooms. When we couldn’t take it anymore we would meet in the kitchen, open the cupboard and stare at its contents, hoping something appetizing would spring from the shelf.

We joked that if a nuclear explosion happened (this was mid-80s) that all they would find of us would be two carbon footprints standing in front of the cupboard.

This afternoon, Deborah and I met for lunch.

Deborah came flying in — the world-wind she always was.

It was impossible to take a picture of her still. Which is a good thing…because that is what I love about her.

She always was the more sensible one.

I ordered wine with lunch. (I just finished a story on the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet.)

Deborah had sweet tea. (Because the aspartame is worse than sugar. And she stays like a stick.)

That was us in law school. I ordered fried oysters; Deborah ordered grilled fish. (Even before it was cool to order grilled fish.)

We went back to the Cloisters which was her crib for the next few days.

White pants after Labor Day.

I wore white pants to lunch with Deborah thinking — I’m not slave to that old rule, then my friend takes me to the Cloister —  “Old Rule” Central.

I wished for business cards to hand out to people. “I know the rule about not wearing white after Labor Day. I just am incredibly self-secure and don’t care.”

It was a terribly beautiful place.

The outside.

The inside.

More of the inside.

All through lunch, all through traipsing around the Cloister in my white pants, we talked.

Of growing children and applying to colleges.

Of the days when we were just out of college ourselves.

The more things change, sometimes the more they stay the same.

Thankfully.

Okay. I know sometimes you tell people they never change — Deborah never does.

Maybe it’s all that grilled fish and sweet tea.

Do you have a friend so different from you — in all the ways you wish you could be —  that you can’t help but love them so much?