My First “Memoir Mondays” Memory Post

We were patiently waiting at Logan Airport for the gate agent to call us up for check-in. Alexa hadn’t arrived from DC yet. I was flanked by my parents who were about to send their only child abroad for five weeks. I noticed another girl, who looked about my age, with her parents and her younger brother in front of us. We struck up a conversation and it turned out she was heading to France too. She was in the same program as I was. That girl’s name was Emily. And, little did I know on that June day in 1994, that we’d land up being life-long friends.

Even though Emily was two years behind me in school, she didn’t act like a sophomore. We became fast-friends, walking around Paris together and exploring the City with the other girls in our group during our first three days in France. When we headed south to Villeneuve-Sur-Lot, we were in different classes at IFLS, but we had lunch together every day.

Emily invited me to join her and her host family often since mine was, er, a bit strange. She was always ready to listen to bizarre stories I had from my daily life with my host family. She made me laugh on the phone, even on the days when all I wanted to do was go back home to be with my normal NJ family!

When my bag was too heavy to carry through the streets of Nimes and Nice, Emily was the one who helped me so that I didn’t break my back. Even though she had a huge green backpack of her own, she was always willing to assist me, because that’s what friends do for each other.

We trekked through the streets of Avignon, Monaco, Nice, and San Remo together; finding our way to historical sites while other kids shopped. (Though we did do our fair share of shopping in Paris on the last day of the tour!) We were like-minded in our desire to see as much as we could of the country before that fateful August day when our plane would carry us back to our homes in Ohio and New Jersey.

14 years later, we’re no longer the same kids as we were… However, we remained close even though we’ve only worked in the same city for one additional summer of our lives (NYC – 1999). College took me to DC and Emily to Boston, where she’s stayed since 1997. Our lives have gone in different ways: hers is devoted to law and mine is devoted to education. However, when we’re together, those things don’t seem to matter since we can sit down and talk just as easily today as we did in the Summer of ’94. I am extremely grateful for that and for my dear friend Emily who I’ve known for nearly half of my life.