Today's Visit

I was heading home after dropping Mariel off at her job at the yoga studio and decided, spur of the moment, to go visit Nikky. It was 4:30 and dinner at Walpan is at 5PM. Nikky was in her room, and looked inquisitively at me when she opened the door. "It's me, Nikky, your friend Jessie -- your paysan." "Oh yeah, it's you. I was hoping to see you today." We made our way into the dining room and sat down. We opened up her photo album, and went through the pictures of Jerry, her husband, and Lucille and Frankie, and her friend Delvina. On a prior visit, I had labeled them all with whatever names she could remember.

We got to the picture of me and my family. "What's this one? This must-a got in here by mistake." "Nikky, look at me," I said. "Now look at the picture." "Yeah??" "Look again at the picture. Now look at me." "Oh my goodness. Look, that's you," Nikky said. "Look at that. You were such a pretty girl. And you've hardly changed at all in all these years! You're lookin' real good!" Nikky turned to Richard. "Doesn't she look just the same? She's my good friend. We go way back." Richard and I smiled at eachother.

By now, Nikky was holding my hand and telling me that I was always such a good girl, and blessing me for being so good to her. We sang our songs together, which makes her so happy. She has her own sense of melody -- going way higher or way lower than the actual notes -- but it really brings her such joy. Her eyes sparkle, she smiles and pumps my had in the rythm of the song. "God love ya."

Then her food came and I said I had to go get my husband's food ready. "Oh yeah -- I know how that goes. I remember doin' that. Do I still have one of those?" "No," I said. "That's o.k.," said Nikky, with a shrug and a dismissive wave of her hand. "No problem."