Meeting Up at Target

This morning, an old friend of mine who I have not seen in years, contacted me to say that she was going to be driving through New Jersey on her way to Massachusetts. Her name is Kerry and we met while I was in my Senior year of college at American University. I was her student teacher. It was my first classroom experience. Kerry was only 24 at the time, just a few years older than me. I worked with her at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland. She was not only my mentor but we became great friends. We spent time together outside of school and I met her family and she met mine. She and her husband Michael got married the year before Dave and I did and they invited us to be a part of their wedding and Kerry was one of my bridesmaids. She still lives in Maryland and we try to meet up every so often, but it has been way too long since we last saw each other. Kerry has four children and when her first son Justin was born, we gave him a baby blanket with two hockey sticks on it. She still brings that blanket up whenever we see her because Justin is 17 now and an exceptional hockey player. The reason they were passing through NJ was because they were on their way to a tournament that he was going to be playing in.

When I heard from her this morning, it was through Facebook. I told her that I’d be at school all day prepping my classroom so she should text me and we’d find a time that worked to meet. I did not hear from her so I sent her a few text messages but we never connected. I was getting so disappointed. It turns out that I had the wrong number for her so someone else must have been getting all those messages instead! In the meantime, she had been trying to reach me through Facebook and I can’t get on Facebook at work. Even though we do keep in touch, we only had each others’ home phone numbers. Fortunately she was able to reach my sister and Kathi gave her my cell phone number and she called.

By this time, it was after two o”clock and I was with the boys at Target. She was fairly close to our exit on the parkway so I told her that I could get home quickly to meet her. She was even closer to Target and knowing that we only had a few minutes to meet, we decided to meet save time and meet there. We knew ahead of time that we weren’t going to have a long visit so this would have to do.

I waited for her at the entrance and saw her as soon as she came in. We gave each other the biggest hug! She is one of those friends that years can go by without seeing each other but when we finally do, it is as if no time has passed! If we didn’t have our kids with us to give away the time span it could have felt like it was yesterday!

We were only able to spend about fifteen minutes with each other and we tried to cram in years of catching up into that short amount of time. They will pass back through New Jersey on their way home on Monday. We are hoping to meet up again then but if that doesn’t work, we promised to not let so many years come between our next visit. It was a quick, unexpected visit but it really made my day!!