Serendipitous friends

Point of personal privilege in breaking from the usual format

There are some perfect days along the way, and some exceptionally lovely people. I happened on Evelyn and Gerard in a store in downtown Manhattan, and we stood there talking excitedly (to the growing consternation of the salespeople) for more than an hour as customers navigated around us. 

I first bonded with Gerard, who sported a big Canon, over photography tech-talk, but his English being almost as bad as my French, bilingual Evelyn graciously translated. It became clear that the three of us enjoyed the same things in the city: the funkier neighborhoods, the back streets, the subways, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Sharing outrage, we compared tragic gaps in French and American social safety nets and railed on about the climate crisis, Trump, and Macron.

After they returned to France, we mailed occasionally, and when I went with my neighbor and friend Karen to a small fishing town on the working-class end of the Mediterranean shore, we met up again. We ate roasted mussels, drank wine, and visited a tiny wine producer, where neighborhood people brought empty bottles to fill from giant casks.

A few years passed until we all met up again in New York, took the swaying tram over a sun-glistened East River and walked to the Noguchi Museum in Queens. We ate at a tiny restaurant (above) in Jackson Heights, chosen without yelp or reviews, because it looked good. And it really was.

I have no idea why our accidental friendship stuck—common interests yes, and shared politics, but something deeper, too. So many people I have known longer or better have drifted away, but Evelyn and Gerard stand out as kind and smart, compassionate and principled.

Covid ended their annual trips to New York, and now illness has intervened. Still, I hope for more days of adventure, food, politics, and pleasure in our serendipitous friendship.