-- Monday, March 13, 2000 --

9:42 p.m. As you can clearly surmise, there was no need to panic, or to worry, or to overclean. Friends are friends are friends to the end. Friends are perhaps the dearest gift on the planet.

A visit that was too short and too long in coming. But I am so grateful that we had a small bit of time together, all of a sudden. Time is suddenly more valuable than anything else. I wish we'd invested more wisely way back when.

We used to spend whole slices of each and every slow and slower child-rearing day comparing notes, keeping track, commiserating, regaling each other, waiting for our lives to get started.

I don't know exactly where the demarcation line between then and now happened. It seemed then that things were taking too long, and it seems now as if that was all so long ago, or only just last year.

They still live in the same house -- we've moved more than twenty times. Their mortgage is paid off. Our latest is brand, spanking new -- and onerous. We would seem to have nothing in common, and yet we have everything in the world to talk about.

And I really miss them tonight as they continue their vacation tour up the coast. I tried to talk them out of going to Big Sur -- saying it's highly overrated and really just a piddly little rock on a nondescript strip of beach, but they used to live in Palo Alto, so they were on to me.

Old friends. Best friends. We have better kids than we deserve and less money than we deserve. We're still on the same side of most issues, and probably always will be. We've gone garbage picking together and found treasures and we went to the big Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos auction together and laughed (and bid on) the expensive trash for sale.

We've spent a lot of time looking for the one perfect thing that was going redefine every single thing around itself, and on more than one occasion, we did, in fact, find it. The Morris chair, an old wooden wagon, an entire barn, an antique MG, rugs, apples -- shopping as an art form. Living as an art form.

While we were sitting around the table last night having dinner, while the candles were flickering, it was once again that same, still moment. The food is finally all on the table. Things slow down. We're suddenly aware of our intense good luck.

So many candles have dribbled onto shiny wood while we've talked about the future. Our future. The future was always the topic back then in the past. The next month. The big plan. The breakout. The grandest scheme. The longing. Something important out there. Strength was taken for granted.

Time was a distance to be sprinted.

Is that still the case? Is it time to stop running?