Deep Friendship

We meet again

It’s just as I remember it from all those years ago: a narrow cobblestone street lined with shops and tourists, the famous small statue of Manneken Pis tucked in the corner and decked out in his costume of the day, and straight ahead, an opening into a large cobblestone square. The Grand-Place of Brussels, Belgium, shines this morning despite the gray skies. The gold gilded stone houses and impressive town hall still take my breath away. But I’m not really taking them in. I’m looking for the large clock on the clock tower. That’s where my brother told me to meet my friend, Martin.

I don’t know where the clock is so I follow my nose through the square, scanning the people who are milling around, their heads raised toward the golden shine of these old buildings. Across the way, I see a man with his back to me. As he raises his hand to his chin, I recognize the gesture from long ago.

Martin and I were close friends for seven of the years I lived in Belgium. In school, in our church and in secular youth groups, we played, sang, talked and camped together. His parents were like the aunt and uncle I didn’t have. When my parents chose to leave Belgium, he was one of the good friends I left behind. In my young mind, I thought I would be back to see all of my friends. Instead, I slowly adjusted to a new culture and slowly made new friends there.

I last saw Martin twelve years ago. And today, when I see that familiar gesture, time stops. I walk over and a big smile breaks over his face. “Rachel!” “Martin!” (Say it with the French accent.) We hug, then separate and look at each other. “Where’s the clock?” he asks. I laugh. “I didn’t know where the clock was either, but I recognized your gesture across the square immediately.”

For the next hour and a half, we sit at a table and have coffee and share a waffle. Our conversation wanders all over our lives and it’s like I have never left. We laugh, we cry, we catch up on our lives but mainly we connect on a level so deep that the passage of time cannot touch the bottom. All that I had to let go when I left my friend and my hometown comes right back into my heart. Martin doesn’t know me as the cheesemonger or writer or block printer I am now. But he knows me better than many of my current friends because he knows my culture, the child and teen I was, those things that framed me.

We all should know friends like these, friends who know us to our depths and who will be there when we need them, despite all that has happened since we last met. And so, as we give each other hugs and take a selfie and walk away, we say we’ll meet again, maybe next year? Same time, same place.