Old friends

On our short break holiday we were able to call in and visit old friends who live in the vicinity. Old friends?
I remember the phone call in December 1975. David was ringing to say a new staff member had arrived to look at the school ready for the following year and he had his wife and small daughter with him. Perhaps I'd like them to visit me. I was a stay at home Mum with a small boy just over a year old and had found it hard to adjust. To leaving my job as a teacher, being the 24 hour a day/7 day a week mother, and moving towns.
So I quickly replied that I'd be happy to meet her. Julie arrived on my door step with her blonde curly headed 2 year old daughter. The next year the family arrived in the town and life was no longer so lonely and hard. Julie and were part of the new play group, got together for coffee (at home since it was long before coffee places proliferated) and chatted while our children played. Our husbands were work colleagues for 20 years.
Times moved on, we each added more children to our families, went back to work and so on. We were the first to move away 20 years ago. Then they moved on retirement and so did we. But still the birthday and Christmas cards or phone calls kept us vaguely in touch and for our kids if I just talked about someone called Julie they knew exactly who I was talking about. The one and only Julie.
We've met up a few times over the last years but not kept in close touch. So today we all had coffee (still at home but with frothy coffee machine coffee) and talked and talked. About where those little children are now and about those children's children and about how it is to get older (and not realise it), the death of our parents and how it is to lose other friends to early death.
We even discussed some of our values and issues dear to our hearts and how heartwarming it was to find that they shared our attitudes. I was amazed that after all this time we were still on the same wave length. There is nothing like old friends. So grateful.