I hadn’t seen Judy in about seventy years. We had reconnected, however, a year-or-so ago after she read about a presentation I had given on one of my books. She contacted me and we e-mailed and talked on a few occasions. Very lovely!

She and I grew up around the corner from each other in South Providence. She now lives in the mid-west and I’m in Massachusetts. I knew her pretty well back then. We played on the street, I went to her grandmother’s corner store for  penny candy, and we graduated together from the Sunday School at the local orthodox synagogue. I have a photograph of us on that day in 1951 when we both wore short-sleeve organza dresses of different hues – hers darker and mine lighter. I don’t remember the actual colors and the old picture gives no clue because it’s black and white. These were ‘shirtwaists’ which were very popular then. I look at the photo and remember how long it took to iron that delicate fabric so the skirt puffed for a swingy appearance. The problem was that the effort spent ironing didn’t matter. Within minutes of putting on the dress the material would collapse in wrinkles and hang straight down erasing the fluffiness.  

Judy graduated from high school a year before me, even though we were very close in age. This was because of the peculiarities of the Rhode Island educational system and the fact that she skipped a half-grade. So, after I completed high school in 1956 and left the state to go to college, I never saw her again.

Jumping into the present, about three weeks ago, Judy called me to say she was in Newport, Rhode Island briefly and asked if there was any possibility that I could come down to see her. “Of course!” I said.

So, we met, looked at each other, and hugged. I don’t think if I passed her on the street that I would recognize her after so many decades.  But, within a very few minutes, there she was – the same person I knew then, just seventy years later. 

We talked for close to five hours about our childhoods in the old neighborhood, what happened to us in and after college: family, work, personal stuff, relocations, and so on. She said maybe we could call Harriet, another friend from the past, whom she had not been in touch with in that same amount of time. Harriet was home and the three of us talked and talked about our long-ago lives – fun things and sorrows. Curiously, for me, our recollections didn’t feel like nostalgia – just an acknowledgment of where and what we came from, and then filling in the voids from all of those years. When we ended our conversation with Harriet, Judy and I continued sharing updates.

For me, our time together felt both surreal and real at the same moment. It was surreal because within minutes of our greeting and allowing for a small amount of readjusting memories of each other, we simply picked up where we had left off. Seven decades warped away into oblivion. That extensive time span imploded. 

It was real because, putting aside the natural traces of aging, we continued being who we were then into who we are today – pretty much the same. One obvious difference was that when we met now, we wore modern-day, wrinkle-free, low maintenance clothing – not those high maintenance dainty dresses from a vanished era. The fashion and fabrics have changed a lot, but not so much us.