Some Things Never Change

Darren came to town! (photos to come) It was so amazing to see him. He is still the same person; I wonder how I seemed to him?

We met up on Friday and went to the Castro for dinner. I met his partner, Brian. Such a nice man. We ate at Nirvana and looked at my photo album. It was quite fun, such a trip to look at the pictures and then look up and see Darren sitting there. His voice was exactly as I remembered, his mannerisms, everything.

Saturday night we were all supposed to get together for dinner, but both Brian and Terri were not feeling well, so it was just me and Darren. We went to Il Fornaio (D'Arcy - our restaurant burned down and was rebuilt but is not the same, so I had to pick another), which was quite nice and so good (I had some amazing gnocchi with truffle-cream sauce). I got a chance to look at Darren's photos. To see your experience viewed through someone else's lens was interesting. He had a couple photos of events I didn't remember (but apparently was at, since I'm in the photo), plus some alternate views of things I did remember (the trip to Ismail's family's summer cottage, our trip up to Rovaniemi, etc.). He had a particularly good one of all of us on our bicycles, completely overloaded with food and beer (we're overloaded!) walking down a dirt road through the forest. By that point, we had been biking for quite some time and the road was too bumpy to bike on - we're all messy and pushing bikes draped with heavy bags and packs. It was worth it, that was a great time. Even if it did start snowing. In June.

What really struck me was something that I'd forgotten in the past 14 years. Darren had a very different experience than D'Arcy, Ismail and I. D'Arcy and I had weird families (at least at the beginning), little money, and were up north away from everyone else. It was kind of she and I against the world. Ismail had no money and I'm surprised he didn't freeze to death that winter -- all he had was a thin Polarfleece jacket and some gloves. However, Darren had a great family that took him in as one of their own. They provided him with everything, great trips, kept him the whole year (he didn't have to switch families), he had a host brother who took him in under his wing... in all the photos, Darren is smiling, has a decent haircut, looks nice. The rest of us are all in varying degrees of mess. I think we each had one haircut the whole year (too expensive) so our hair is all grown out badly, we're all wearing pretty much the exact same outfit every time (us girls gained weight and soon enough only one pair of pants fit, and Ismail only had a few items of clothing anyway!), and our expressions are somewhat more cynical than Darren's.

I told Darren about a few of D'Arcy and my more adventurous adventures (desperate in Sweden, we spent the night at a perfect stranger's house... poor in Kajaani, we spent the night wearing ALL our clothes to stay warm and hung out in phone booths, ATM kiosks, the bus station... poor again on the way back from Russia we spent the night under the stairwell behind a building until we saw rats coming down the stairs -- at that point, I decided my mother would have wanted me to use the emergency VISA card for a hotel room). He was a little shocked; other than an extreme case of homesickness midway through the year, he had a pretty amazing time. Ours was amazing too... only in a different way. Only in a made-for-TV kind of way.

Anyway. It was great to see him; it made me miss the old gang so much. D'Arcy, Darren, Ismail, Monica, Melody, Shelley... we were family, we were closer than close. I've never experienced that kind of group friendship, before or since. For all the craziness, I wouldn't have traded it to be anywhere else. Who else lives in Finland for a whole year, anyway?