A Dear Friend

I miss a friend whom I visited several times over the years, with our spouses or separately. We also phoned and wrote. Among our many topics of conversation, we liked going barefoot. She would’ve called these jovial thoughts “an armchair barefoot experience.”

During a summertime visit, we were touring her community, and we both decided to kick off our sandals in the car and stay that way for a while. What a good-natured variance from the norm—at the time, we were on one side and the other of 40—but we figured, carpe diem.

First we padded around the shops of that area, popped into a greeting card place, and visited a favorite bookstore of hers and browsed the shelves. Then we went to the park where she said she liked to stay shoeless in summer, and we walked around there for quite a while, in the grass and on the path. At some point in the afternoon we stopped on the sidewalk and did the obligatory, humorous comparison of the bottoms of our feet. Each of us sported a black footprint, which was obnoxious but to us also funny.

She needed to get groceries for supper, so we went to the supermarket. Still barefoot, we ran across the hot parking lot, explored the aisles, and assembled the evening’s recipe ingredients. Then, grocery bags in hand, we ran across the parking lot again, laughing at the heat and our own silliness.

During this whole time, we chatted about many things: family, careers, dreams. She was a great, humble person with whom to chat and laugh, and these years after her passing I still think of her nearly once a week.