Three friends about Paris

Remember my post about friends? I mentioned on that post my friends from my hometown Popayán, and the fact that I feel as close to them as I did when we used to play together as kids. Childhood friends are easy friends. No need to explain who we are, or where we come from. We know each other from the inside out. Of course people change, and some take paths that lead them to places we don't recognize or understand, and we mourn their loss.
I left Popayán after high school. I went to California as an exchange student, and came back to Colombia to study in Bogotá. I went home for holidays and vacations, and I stayed in touch with my friends via "the mom net" (back then, there was nothing like the Internet). Moms would let us know about our friends, who was getting married, who was living overseas, who was staying close to home. We would see friends sporadically, always in a hurry, a lunch in between other appointments. It didn't matter how much time went by, or how short the meetings were; we would pick up the conversation as if we had been together just the day before.
I left Colombia as many others did. My generation went every which way, and we all found a future in far away places. We keep on coming back to the town, we keep in touch, the mom net still does its job well, but the internet has made it really easy to be "close". When I moved to Italy, I found myself physically closer to a group of special friends: My best friend from childhood, Ana María lives in Israel, our friend Catalina lives in France and our other friend Claudia lives in Spain. We e-mailed each other often, planning a big get-together with all the families - we had to find a big enough space, close to everyone, and additionally we needed to find a time slot when all the children would be in vacation. Needless to say, we were a little overwhelmed by all of it, until Cata's husband suggested that we could meet by ourselves (what a wise man!) It took us very little time to find a date and a place: Paris, December 14, 15 and 16.
We were ready, and very excited until our friend Claudia, who is pregnant, was diagnosed with placenta previa... we were saddened by the news, but we knew there was nothing else to do other than planning another reunion to meet the baby! With this in mind, we went ahead with our plan and met in Paris.

I wouldn't dare to try and transcript all that we talked, suffice to say that my friend Cata's sister, who lives in Paris, said that we were going to "run out of words". We had such a great time! We talked until the wee hours of the morning, we walked to beautiful places, and eat fabulous food. We walked a lot, without a plan, just making sure that we were enjoying each other's company. We told each other all the little details that make our life special. We talked about our husbands and our children, and we laughed! We laughed so hard! It was everything that I remembered and more! I love my friends.