It’s fairly safe to say that moving to Boston for college exploded my social circle by probably two hundred percent! I was not a complete loner in my younger years -I had my family, pets, a few close school companions (including my now partner,) and a collection of friendly co-workers.  If you flashed a quick light on my life, you’d catch more glimpses of tea and books than tea and conversation.

In college, it was firmly confirmed that companions are for conversation.  Unless it was finals week, people didn’t just get together and quietly read -or write, or knit, or eat, or anything!  Silence was for watching movies (maybe,) for sleepily trudging past one another in the bathroom, and little else.

My post college years have followed the same pattern: people get together and talk. That’s okay -I’m the first to offer a quirky observation, to sing a few lines of song, to exclaim over a victory or an injustice.  Once in a rare while though, I am treated to a moment like last Monday’s, where my breakfast companion and I found ourselves briefly in silent enjoyment of the treasure of each other’s company and the meal we made.

And when that happens, I think: this is lovely, this is good.