A Little More on the Subject of Friendship

I know that friendship seems to have become a recurrent theme through my postings but it is one of the great joys in my life. The friendships I have made since arriving in Geneva buoyed our transition and raised this amazing expatriate experience to a new level.

In Canada, I left behind a network of loving and loyal friends who valiantly nurture our long-distance connection. I am incredibly grateful for their effort. My relationship, thankfully, with my immediate family is extraordinary. I would have chosen every one of them as friends even if they weren’t family!

Among the many thrills that living in Europe has given me is the now close proximity to my oldest friend, Sheila, who has lived in London for the better part of 20 years. We met at age 14, grade nine, at Riverdale High School in Montreal.

As best friends, we shared adolescence, high school, braces, university, first loves, first jobs, marriage, children, wanderlust, braces again, and great distances for almost 30 years. After she met and married her lovely English man, we still managed to communicate regularly and visit every couple of years. Now we exchange visits every couple of months!


She was in Geneva this week for a few brief but blissful days. We had a leisurely laughter-filled lunch with Nat on Thursday at Geneva’s elegant Hôtel les Armures. Over cabillaud, crème brûlée, and conversation, we marveled at the forks and turns of life that brought all three of us to that table.