Thursday, January 3, 2013

Past as Prologue

Spent tonight out to dinner at the home of a college professor of mine. (Yes, from way back when when I was in college. When woolly mammoths roamed the campus and we had to rub sticks together to make our computers run.)

Christopher and I see her about once every 3 months or so, and on nights like tonight the gathering includes various other former students of hers.

Ironically, earlier today I was talking to someone about how few friends of my own I have in the Cities. Most of the people we socialize with are either mutual friends of both Christopher and me, or friends of Christopher whom I've come to know over time.

This group, though, is "mine." And it's kind of fun to have that. It's fun for me to have a group of friends who come from my past, and have known me for 20+ years. It's the same thing that Christopher has with a lot of the people we usually spend time with. But, in many of those cases, I'm the newbie - even after 7 years.

I especially like hanging out with groups like this, though, since, over time, they've also come to know Christopher, so we all can sit and chat in large or small groups and talk about things we all have in common - or that we don't have in common - and, suddenly, find that almost 3 hours have gone by, and we really should leave to get home.

And, yes, I admit that I'm being selfish about this. That I should recognize that the same thing goes on when we're hanging out with Christopher's friends. And that both ways are equally good.

But it was a rough day, today, and I've been feeling like a lot of the year's potential has been getting sucked away. And that infusion from the past... well... somehow it made the future seem more possible.

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