Friends Old and New

Last night, after my last meeting of the day, I decided to take a short walk across campus.  As I walked in the dusk, I wondered if I would get confused decades from now, when I'm an older woman.  Would I look back to this April night and think of myself as an undergrad?  Would I confuse my seminary campus (Wesley Theological Seminary in NW Washington, DC) with my undergraduate campus (Newberry College, in very rural Newberry, SC) in my confused older brain?

Probably not.  They are similar, but so different.  And I am similar, undergrad Kristin and seminarian Kristin, but so different.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend from those undergrad days.  She went to UVa, but we saw each other regularly.  We met as Lutherans in the Lutheran Student Movement, as it was called then.  We were both from Northern Virginia, so we got together on school breaks.  I went to her ordination as she graduated from the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia; she came to my wedding.

We've kept up with each other more sporadically since then, and I haven't seen her since 2004 when she was on vacation in South Florida.  I'm happy to say that it was easy to be together, in the ways that we used to be together, from the deep conversations to the ice cream that we enjoyed.  

I am so grateful for friendships like these.  When I was an undergrad, I always hoped that I would have friendships so deep that we could pick up right where we left off; undergraduate Kristin would be surprised that I would have friends I might not see in decades, but happy that we can still be friends, even without that face to face time.

At the end of the afternoon, I went to the last Wesley Student Council meeting of the academic year.  That had a surreal aspect.  It feels like we just started meeting, but here we are at the end.  I went to the first meeting in the spirit of undergraduate Kristin who decided to try every student group on campus, except sororities because they would cost too much.  Seminarian Kristin didn't have as many options as undergraduate Kristin, so off she went to that first student council meeting in September.  It's been good to be part of that group.

I feel like I just got here, just unloaded my last carload of stuff, fully expecting to be in this apartment for the next 2-3 years.  And now, here I am, about to load it all back in the car over the next several trips back to the North Carolina mountains.  It's been a good experience being here, although I am struck by how different my experience has been compared to my friend's experience at Philadelphia.

Her seminary in Philly had to merge with the one in Gettysburg to survive--a metaphor for the time we're in.