So much laughing. Such a good time.

It was the daughter of my high school best friend and the daughter’s husband, doing a long driving trip of a lifetime to see sights never seen before, with our house as a crash landing spot mid-California.

Amy and I each took a turn at generational double taking: she said they were going next to see her aunt, her father’s sister.

I started to say, I didn’t know he had a sister–and stopped and realized I meant her mother’s father, and of course she meant her dad and he did and silly me.

Just before they left this morning, I told her she reminded me of her grandmother: she was a sweetheart.

There was this flicker of confusion and she was trying to figure out what I meant. The only grandmother she ever knew was a step; her grandfather had been widowed around the time she’d been born and had remarried to someone who’d never had children, to whom Amy had been her only grandchild.

Your mom’s mom, I said gently. The one you never knew. I did.

She took a deep breath inhaling the essence of that thought and held me in a long, long hug.

I know what it’s like to grow up missing a grandfather lost to an early death. I know that wondering and I feel that strong wistfulness.

At long last, at least for her, I knew I could do something about it. The connection is real.

I sent them off with Andy’s peaches to share with her aunt and they will be back here Sunday before turning in the rental and flying home across the country. I cannot wait to see them again.