This fall marked the 25th anniversary of when I first met Kira. Our friendship has been an unlikely one in many respects – we actually lost touch for almost a decade when she moved to Florida – but when she returned and we found our way back to one another, it was one of those nudges of the universe that we have, despite some obstacles, managed to heed and nurture. When I first met her, she was one of the quietest people I’d known; shy and almost painfully introverted, she made me feel like a brash extrovert – something I most certainly wasn’t, even as I acted it out with precision. I must have brought out the fighting spirit in her too, as we soon engaged in battles of our own: she fought with me unlike she would have fought with anyone else at work, and I took it as a sign of friendship and trust, as she reserved those entanglements for her family. In the weird and twisted mindfuck that was my habit, I was flattered that she considered me family that way. Remember, we were both in our early-mid twenties, and knew little to nothing of how to behave in the world. Making the journey into maturity continues to be a theme in our adventures.
For our musical accompaniment, I’ve chosen Shirley Horn’s ‘The Main Ingredient’ for its culinary references to go along with our Friendsgiving feasts, and an underlying hint of blues to go with our states of mind. First up is opening track ‘Blues for Sarge’, which sets the scene for the feast of charcuterie and appetizers which formed our first meal.
Now that Kira has managed to switch her work hours, she finishes up just a little while after I arrive in the city. On this night, we had a quick cup of Earl Grey tea, then went back out for some final ingredients for dinner. An intentionally campy collection of appetizers from my childhood formed the pillars of the meal – these campy meatballs, a cheesy crab dip, and some white bean bastardized hummus – and we finished it all with the cutting board of meats and cheeses you see here. For too many nights, Kira and I had feasted on something similar, only to have to struggle through reservations for dinner later in the night; we finally figured out, twenty five years into this, that our appetizer prelude was enough for the first evening.
Catching up after a year apart only feels like a daunting task if you try to cram it all into the first hour of being together. We have enough experience coming together after extended periods away to know that such sharing unfolds slowly and naturally over the course of a weekend. For the first night of this Friendsgiving gathering, which would mostly consist of just the two of us, we settled back into our usual groove.
Outside, the Braddock Park fountain was still running – we didn’t know it then, but this would be the last weekend it ran before being drained and shut down for the winter. We’d made it back just in time…
