Surprised by Two Old Friends

Phyllis and John on their wedding day.

My sister and I walked to a nearby Lutheran Church this Sunday morning. It was a different synod from the one we were raised in. But, it was only a couple of blocks away, it was a clear, cool, sunny morning, and we decided to give the church a try. It turned out to be a friendly place filled with nice people who welcomed us and an hour later we felt good as we walked out into the sunlight and headed for home.

I was planning to put on some jeans and wait to hear from my college friend Phyllis. She was in the Bay Area for the Cal game and we had planned to go to brunch before she and her family headed back to Santa Monica. I told her my sister was visiting and we would be at church from 9:00 'til 10:00 a.m. and we could go out after that.

About a quarter of a block into our walk home, some people in a huge red van up ahead of us started to wave. Gee that's a friendly church, I thought. Even after we leave, they are still saying hello/goodbye to us.

But it was my friend Phyllis, her husband John (also an old friend), their son Chris, (whom I last saw as a boy of three), her daughter Annie, (whom I last saw as a toddler), and John's brother and law partner, Bill, a big handsome Naval Academy graduate. How they found us, I leave to Phyllis's husband John, who as a lawyer, is also a great detective. My address, help from GPS and Google Maps, and the knowledge that I was a Lutheran were all the tools he needed. Never try to put anything over on John. He's on to you every time.

What fun we had! We all headed to the best pancake house in town and spent two hours, all talking at once. Phyllis and I knew each other as college undergraduates, then roomed together in Los Angeles while I got my Master's Degree at UCLA and Phyllis worked in the theater and dated John. John was Naval ROTC, doing his active duty in San Diego.

Phyllis found this dress at a Hollywood costume shop when she was volunteering there and working for an LA theater company. She brought it home to wear to a party and it was very glam on her.

Phyllis has a kind nature and is also incredibly creative. The creative sides of each of us have always clicked and her calm nature is a wonderful influence on the hyper me.

Today, over pancakes, I told the Phyllis-John kids about the time that John drove up to our apartment from his ship in San Diego with a strange story to tell. It seems he had been the Officer of the Deck all weekend and he'd had to deal with a disciplinary problem. One of his sailors had been on shore leave and had been arrested for soliciting. Not a good thing in any case, and to make it even more interesting, the sailor was dressed as a woman and was soliciting men.

John held his head in his hands. "Oh, they don't tell you what to do about this in Officer Training," he had moaned. Thirty years later, it was funny to recall.

Phyllis and John also lived near me when I was a journalist in Washington D.C. I was there for the birth of their first child Christopher, now a successful engineer. Their daughter Annie, born just before they moved to Los Angeles, now edits a magazine in D.C. Their two younger children weren't along for this visit.

An Easter visit with Phyllis, Christopher, and Annie. I was in Los Angeles from Washington D.C. to interview the cast of the ABC show "Dynasty."

These are people I really love and, though I lost touch with them briefly during my last few years in Florida, when we reunited, it was just as if we had never parted.

Intelligent and funny, they spent two hours making me laugh as they treated me to brunch and we traded silly tales of days gone by. They've worked hard and been lucky and have succeeded in their marriage, something so rare today. What fun we'll have now that I've finally rejoined them in California, the land where anything, even happiness, is possible.