Our Wednesday, Your Thursday?

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
by Anais Nin

Since 2011, periodic emails have referenced “Our Wednesday, Your Thursday?”

That year, after boarding a packed train in Cork, Ireland, we faced two recent arrivals to our car. Soon, we sat knee to knee with this Australian couple. Laughing about the tight quarters, I joked, “We are your new best friends.” But it was no joke; we remain friends across the globe all the way to 2019.

Shared Experiences

When we arrived in Killarney that September day, we met with Gayl and Allan in a quiet corner of the International Hotel and shared an impromptu Happy Hour of cheese, crackers, grapes, chocolates and a bottle of wine.

Over the next three days, we experienced the sights and sounds of Southwest Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, watching a demonstration of whip-smart dogs herding sheep, shopping in the hamlet of Sneem and touring a castle and national park. At dinner between sets of raucous pub music, we shared more travel stories – they six months into an 10-month gala retirement trip around the Northern Hemisphere and we flying to Paris for a week's stay after Ireland.

The travel tales flowed into observations about life in the United States and Australia, about career to career, family to family. With they recently retired and another three years to my retirement, it was a case of work life was or will soon be over. Unknown territory, indeed.

The Virtual Life

Not a whole lot of difference between our work or world views, but 14 hours and an International Date Line between our days. Thanks to Skype and then FaceTime, we’ve stayed in touch; they having their next day’s breakfast juice, we checking in before the previous night’s dinner. The “best of times” and “worst of times” made their appointed rounds for each of us, episodes we could talk about frankly as friends.

In 2016, they could not join us when we set out for a fishing village in the south of France. Instead, we FaceTimed to hear about their travels around Asia.

In 2017, we toyed with the idea of meeting up for a Panama Canal cruise, but ship schedules and seasonal disparities (their winter, our summer) got in the way. Instead, we switched plans, leading to meeting in Hawaii in March 2018.

Another Hotel Lobby

Nearly seven years since Ireland, we met Gayl and Allan in the bustling lobby of Oahu’s Park Shore, a boutique hotel located by a city pier jutting into the Pacific where surfers and sunset dazzle and just across from city gardens, a zoo and Diamond Head.

On the first night at the hotel’s Japanese-owned restaurant, we gestured our way through ordering dinner. Another night, we hosted an ABC Market takeout dinner in our hotel room on the third-floor pool deck, the breezes balmy. Next, they hosted a dinner in their 18th-floor room overlooking the ocean and mountain, the balcony view stunning.

With rainbows rising above the spine of Oahu’s mountain range, we all sailed away from the shore to snorkel with sea turtles and a school of blue fish milling like extras on a movie set. Next, we rented a car for a drive to the North Shore and then toured somber Pearl Harbor before boarding a ship to cruise to Maui, Hilo and Kona on the Big Island and Kauai. Since our friends preferred touring volcanoes and we were drawn to tropical gardens, we took separate excursions, meeting at night for the ship’s entertainment or dance clubs.

To Meet Again

It was hard to say goodbye to these fun-loving people, and we thereafter commiserated on FaceTime. Trying on practical retirement masks, we said 2019 would be a quieter year, until it wasn’t. If all goes well, we’ll see Gayl and Allan in Fort Lauderdale in November before they take a Panama Canal cruise, We’ll have tales to tell about a second cruise from Copenhagen to New York.

For the November get together, I’ll suggest we drive 22 miles to Butterfly World, since we have something in common with its 20,000 flighty creatures who gather from all over the world, find life intoxicating and, in the cosmic scheme of things, don’t live very long.