Friday, May 14, 2010

A Great Friday Night

I arrived in this town twenty-three years ago as a new employee of the Smithsonian Institution. I was not dusting dinosaurs, as I liked to tell everyone, I was just another cog in the wheel of the personnel office. It was an easy job, one that didn't take too much brainpower.

There were a few of us recent college grads working in personnel those days and we bonded pretty quickly. We enjoyed lunchtime naps under the trees on the mall and lunches that often lasted much longer than our allotted sixty minutes. We were new to DC and enjoying life on our own for the first time.

Tonight I met up with two gals that I worked with at the time. We had dinner at a local music club and listened to some bluegrass while we caught up with each other. The three of us haven't worked together in twenty years. The Smithsonian was just the first stop in three very different career tracks...law, education and federal employee.

The conversation and laughter included the requisite reminiscing about life in "the castle." It also included an update on recent life events, an update that included a breast cancer diagnosis, the need for reading glasses and the latest tales from the world of motherhood.

Our time together passed quickly. We exchanged good-byes in the parking lot and acknowledged how great it was to spend time together on a rainy Friday night. I climbed in the car and smiled.

Great. That's precisely what it was.

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