I’ve just come from lunch with two gals I met years ago in an Italian class I took for years with Paul and Jen. Pamela and Sharon are two lovely, sharp, funny and kind women whose company I enjoy immensely. Sharon is sweet and kind, but edgy and I like that in her because when I discovered that about her it was a revelation. She’s soft and I took it for granted that she was a bit of a Pollyanna and a pushover. Wrong. Dead wrong. She’s whip smart and dead on when it comes to human observations. I love having lunch with her – we have substantive chats and then get really catty. Pam’s great too. Beautiful, talented, absolutely hilarious, she’s another person my first impression got completely wrong. I thought she’d be stuck up – again, I was dead wrong. She’s disarmingly honest and real and does not take herself or anything else too seriously. We’ve been working on having lunch once a week, which is nice.

The class we took was in a small group – our teacher and the five of us. We learned some Italian and spent a great deal of time discussing our lives. Tears were shed on more than one occasion and I felt very safe within that group. Our teacher was wonderful, warm, beautiful, talented and bright and very open to human emotions. I enjoyed those years. In addition to everything else, they were also special because I spent a lot of time alone with Paul and Jen, which helped round out and deepen our relationship, much in the way that my year and a half in Munich did.

I love Paul and Jen. Paul’s a goof and Jen’s a pragmatist and sometimes their roles get flipped. That’s when it gets interesting. I’ve always felt safe with them and trust them with anything. They’re good folks. Plus, they introduced me to Chris. Major points for that!