Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

I just got back from London, where I met up with the Aging Hippie, not the Queen. Karen was en route to Morocco for a holiday from her Peace Corps placement in Pretoria. I hadn’t seen her in far too long. 

Karen is an aging hippie I met at a peace vigil in San Francisco nine years ago. There I was, wearing a sun hat over my long grey plait, standing outside the federal building with my placard on my first day in SF, 

and there  was she, wearing a Grandmothers for Peace badge, a purple splodge in her grey hair – she doesn’t do subtle -  with a placard, and her grand-daughter in a buggy. She came up and said ‘Hello,’ and that was that. Since then we’ve been on more trips together in California (holiday trips! holiday trips!) than I can remember.

When she said she was passing through London and asked if I'd go down and spend some time with her, I said there was nothing I would like less than going to London the weekend before Christmas, but I loved her, so yes, I’d go.

We only had 24 hours to catch up on all the things that won’t fit into a weekly Skype conversation. We walked and talked in Regents Park one day, and in Kensington gardens another. 

Windswept

And we spent an hour and a half over breakfast on Monday, where sore stuff spilled out from both of us. A friend is someone to hold your hand when the darkness of the world is overwhelming.

It was so good to see her. Next autumn she’ll be back in California and we're planning a trip to Yosemite.

Something happened on the tube that has never happened to either of us before. People stood up and offered us their seats. We must be looking even older and more wrinkly than I imagined. Sic transit gloria mundi.