San Sebastian Again- old friends (and cakes!)

 Another summer and I am back in the North of Spain, near the border with France about an hour away from the place where I spent many years of my life.  

I may or may not have mentioned before the phrase "soul friends", in case I have not, it is something similar to what Anne of Green Gables called "bosom friends". If you haven't read Anne of Green Gables I highly recommend it. It was a childhood favorite that has sort of grown up with me. Like Pride and Prejudice, it is a book in which each read brings out new nuances and side jokes that were not at first apparent. Plus adult me pick's up on things that would not have been readily apparent to 10 yr old (Anne) or teenage me (P and P). You have to wonder what Austen or Alcott thought behind their feisty protagonists. 

As I sit on the terrace I have the blessing to be in temporary possession of, watching the neighbors of this particular part of the town go by, I look back on these past few days. It was a weekend of birthdays. My own niece and nephew had birthdays on Friday and Sunday, and the little boy of the family I am visiting turned three on Sunday as well. I love to bake and experiment with new recipes and this past weekend gave me the opportunity to do just that.  The cake for one birthday party was a modification of my Salvadoran nut cake, which I will have to make for my family come Christmas if the nieces and nephew allow for a modification in the usual Christmas menu (they usually resist changes to the traditional Salvadoran food we have)😊.  And the double chocolate chip cookies on Sunday were one of my more unscripted experiments that fortunately turned out well, especially since I had to guess a bit on baking times during the first batch. Sadly no photo's of either creation. 

The birthday party on Sunday was an unplanned reunion of old friends from my undergrad uni. Two of us are more acquaintances with each other and friends with the rest of the group. She is the sister of someone I cared for very much in undergrad, life has meant that our paths had not crossed at all since then, and though I have known his sister just as long we never really became friends. It may surprise those that know me personally but I was once (and still to an extent am) a very shy person. This reappears from time to time when around some people. It is not something rational, it just happens and so it is with this particular person. I don't know if we could ever have become friends,  we get along when we meet but I am decidedly less talkative when she is around so it has never grown. One of those irrational things in this life that may never be understood and for which it is best to just let life take care of. 

This brings me back to the topic of 'soul friends'. 'Soul friends' are those people with whom you simply can be yourself and with whom, no matter the time and distance that may elapse between, you can pick up as if you had seen each other the day before. So it is with a dear friend I met up with yesterday (as it is with that girl's brother). We had not seen each other in person since 2015, when I stopped by our old university town on my way to my brother's after the Oxford and Cambridge Lourdes Pilgrimage. These joyful encounters with loved ones are what make travel so very much worthwhile. 

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