It's a pleasure to be asked to dine with other people; especially when they are friends I haven't seen in a very, very, very long time. My God! I was ecstatic when I received the phone call that Giselli ( 'Selli for short ) and her new boyfriend were in New York from Sao Paulo and, had gotten hold of a friend of a friend of a friend--blah, blah, blah--which led to her finally contacting me.

Overjoyed, we made plans to meet and after an afternoon full of annoying but necessary errands the day ended rather pleasantly at Via Brasil where I ate feijoda to my heart's content. Josh took the path of least resistance or maybe not, and went with seafood, though occasionally he had the nerve to poke his fork in my plate. ( He actually thought he could be subtle about it--imagine!) Selli and Mauro decided upon some other delicate food.

The entire time as we dined I was amazed at Selli's ease with and articulation in using English. When we first met back in '87 she barely spoke a word of English and I not a word of Portuguese. We worked in an electronics store on 57th and Broadway owned by a Brazilian couple, but because of the nature of the job and as she and I became lunch buddies and thereafter friends, we began teaching each other "our" languages. It was fun.

She bought my son his first baby shoes of the Osh Kosh be Gosh variety after he was born, and we spent a couple of Christmases together with our friends and family before she had to return home to Sao Paulo "for good!" she had said.

I am surprised yet, at how unchanged she seemed after the span of years. It was as if she had never left; as if she had not been daunted by life and experience as I have been. As we all dined and chatted and laughed our friendship seemed to just picked up right where it left off 10 years ago. I remembered how she once thought alcoholism was fashionable, when every Friday night after work she couldn't wait to go have a drink and get drunk just for the fun of it, which actually became more of a bother to everyone than anything else. We laughed about that and Marco, her boyfriend raised his brows suspiciously.

Soon however, dinner was at an end. They both needed to head off to Queens and then will be off for Chicago in a few days. With some difficulty we all bade each other (Selli and I somewhat tearfully) so long, rather than goodbye, after having exchanged all the necessary contact info--email, phones, fax #s' addresses etc. It was a kind of deja vue for me-- a few months ago my roommate and classmate from college returned home to Germany and I remembered going through the same motions of saying tearful goodbyes and such on the day of her departure. When people I really care about move away, it feels as if something leaves me as well; the thought that they are no longer near is somewhat disconcerting. It's just not the same communicating via phone, email etc. and yet, I'd just as soon accept it for the sake of keeping "in touch" and for the sake of instant communication. All in all, I had a great day!

Goodnight.