The Po Show

We had brunch in Brooklyn yesterday with a friend we haven't seen in about 6 years. She was in Ross' program at UCLA and was one of the group of people we hung out with in the early years of his grad school odyssey (which began, gack!, 14 years ago!!). We were childless back in those days, of course, and it was a great time to go out drinking and to parties and to football games at the Rose Bowl (with lots more drinking). We were the only married couple for several years, but over time many of our group met their matches, paired off, and married. For a long time, we were the only ones with a child, but now many of them have babies and toddlers too. One by one, the people in our group left town to go do field work in points around the globe, to take jobs after dropping out of the program (the Ph.D. biz just ain't for everyone, as many people discover), or just because they found something to do somewhere else. But those first few years were a lot of fun and I think of all those folks with fondness.

This friend is in New York for a few weeks, taking a class. She seemed much the same as she was when we last saw her in L.A. six years ago, very funny and sweet and with one of the loudest laughs I've ever heard. She's been living in Switzerland and Florida and various other places, and is thinking of moving to New York. She's still single, relieved that her brother and his wife are having a baby so that takes the pressure off herself, and she carries pictures of her little dog with her in her purse. 

It's always weird for me to sit down and talk with people who knew me in my previous incarnation, back when I worked. I don't know what to say when they ask what I'm doing now. "Doing the stay at home mom thing" is what I usually say, with a certain amount of self-deprecation. Everyone always says, "Oh, that's great!" but then they don't know what to say after that. 

But yesterday, I didn't really mind. It didn't matter that I didn't have a job to talk about, something to show that I was still a productive member of society, as I was back in the day. The two products of my life's work were sitting at the table, eating pancakes and playing their DSs, and they answer the question "So what have you been doing?"