Where's the Silver Lining?

Visit with a lost friend

Jeanie and I met when we were in the third grade. Between my father's assigments or when he was overseas and we couldn't go, we would live in Ponca City, Oklahoma, where his mother lived. When we returned from Guam, we stayed with my grandmother until my father and mother found us a place to live in Enid. He would be stationed at Vance Air Force Base. Anyway, I met Jeanie during one of our visits in Ponca City that year when we attended the First Church of the Nazarene.

Over the years, we became and stayed friends between my comings and goings. The last time I saw her was about twenty-two years ago. She and her family were living in Ponca City, and we were in Pawhuska about 40 miles away. Then she moved without telling me. I heard about her from time to time from my mother who knew her mother.

When Jean's mother and father moved away, I had no idea where she was. I searched for her with no results. Someone emailed me that she had died. I searched harder, and finally discovered she not only was alive, but that she lives just about an hour from me. Tonight we talked on the phone, the first visit in twenty-two years, as if those years disappeared completely.

But she sounds so much older. Heheheh, bet she sitting there thinking the same thing about me.