The Benefits of Cancer

Tonight we had dinner with my college roommate and her husband and their teenaged daughter. There's no reason why we don't get together, except that Donna and Dave have a life, and we have a life and somehow, we just haven't. But now I'm sick and Dave has had a bit of a health problem, so somehow that provided the impetus to all get together.

How easy it was to feel as if I were nineteen again, and how easy to be with people I've known so long. Of course, we said all the usual things about how we shouldn't have waited so long to get together. And we shouldn't. But at least we finally did. And Dave and I even had one of those intense political discussions we used to have in college. We used to have them at two in the morning instead of ten at night, but at my age, ten at night can feel like two in the morning.