Twenty three years ago, Anne and I had the amazing opportunity of going on a short goodwill student exchange to Germany. A handful of German language high school students in the Washington DC metro area were chosen to visit a handful of students in and around Bonn (the then capital of West Germany, yes I am that old) in commemoration of Lufthansa beginning to offer flight service between the two capitals. We traveled with classmates and a teacher from our school and then we were housed with our exchange partners. We attended school with them and traveled to various sites in and around Bonn with them and then we went home and the German students came to visit us in a similar fashion later that year.
Well, she was in town yesterday for a quick trip and so we got together for lunch at the yummy Mesa Grill so that we could catch up on the intervening years. I think the food was probably better at Mesa Grill than at most of the places we ate in Germany (think cheap tourist food, because Lufthansa was footing the bill), but the day the first shot was taken remains seared in my memory as one of calmness and ease (Rhine river cruise for the day, truly lovely). It amazes me how completely our lives have twisted and turned on themselves in the 23 years since we wandered the Rhine that day. Isn't it delightful how catching up with an old friend is such a cause for dusting off memories and reflecting on the time since last meetings? I find myself musing on bits of Robert Frost and the Road Not Taken. Funny thing is, though Anne and I have taken wildly divergent paths in our lives, I think we both took the road less traveled. How many forks in that road are there really, I wonder?
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