Wow, what a beautiful spring day it was!
Got together with my local lesbian Muslim friends for lunch downtown and spent the entire afternoon hanging out together. It started about a month and a half ago. A woman in a lesbian Muslim group noticed I'm in the DC area, so she wrote that she was going to be visiting, and asked if we could get together. I said that would be great and I wanted her to meet some women here. This is the same bunch of gals that has recently started saying to one another: Let's get together for lunch on Sundays. So when this lady said she would visit from Massachusetts it seemed like the perfect occasion for us all to meet.
When we got to the restaurant we called her and found out she'd canceled at the last minute (said she'd overbooked her visit, and wanted to see her parents--I know how easily one runs out of time on visits back home). We went on to have a lovely afternoon anyway. I kept remembering her today, even though we'd never met her and didn't even know what she looked like except that she wears a Palestinian scarf. She was the one we had to thank for the pleasant time we shared today, our togetherness. In a paradoxical way, I felt her presence through her absence.
Our lunch was at Busboys and Poets in the U Street Corridor--this is a place owned by a cool Arab guy named Andy Shallal who supports progressive causes and hosts a lot of activist events. For example, he hosted and fed the women of Code Pink for their Mother's Day vigil last year, which is how I met him. So we all felt it was a righteous business to support. The place has always been insanely crowded every time I've been there. Washingtonians love it en masse.
After lunch we went for a long walk, through Shaw and Adams Morgan, to Dupont Circle and back. The Circle is a good-sized park and was totally crammed full of people today. This is a great neighborhood for Sunday afternoon outings. I used to work there, but had never been on a Sunday. We stopped at Beadazzled and I found an amethyst ring of exactly the sort I like best. I rarely find the exact kinds of rings I like, and when I do I buy them. I was dressed head to toe in purple again and when I said I was looking for amethyst my friends laughed and said I was starting to get predictable. Hey, I can't help it if purple looks good on me. I'm a "winter." The shop lady was in a good mood. No wonder, the weather brought out tons of people like us, who said what a nice day, let's go for a walk by the boutiques... Very good for business.
We took such a long time walking around and soaking up the warmth and sunshine of this beautiful day, it was dinnertime before we knew it, so we went to Thai Chef for dinner and I had a pretty decent vegetable green curry. We enjoyed another long walk back to my car, with lots of deep conversation, and stood a long time on the street corner group-hugging and saying goodbye as the sun went down. Then I gave one of my friends a ride back to her place on Capitol Hill. She's Pakistani and the better we get to know one another, the more important she becomes to me as someone I can talk to who totally understands the desi stuff I go through with family, culture, and religion, as I understand her stuff. We see life eye to eye a lot. One thing we disagreed about over lunch, she was bored with the DC Dyke March as much as I loved it. She's the one I wrote about I had seen at the march from a distance but didn't get to speak to then. Well, since then we've gotten a lot better about finding chances to get together.
Feeling so grateful for my dear girlfriends, the joy of friendship in sharing this perfect spring weather with people I love but don't see often enough. Somehow we found one another in this big crazy world...
When we got to the restaurant we called her and found out she'd canceled at the last minute (said she'd overbooked her visit, and wanted to see her parents--I know how easily one runs out of time on visits back home). We went on to have a lovely afternoon anyway. I kept remembering her today, even though we'd never met her and didn't even know what she looked like except that she wears a Palestinian scarf. She was the one we had to thank for the pleasant time we shared today, our togetherness. In a paradoxical way, I felt her presence through her absence.
Our lunch was at Busboys and Poets in the U Street Corridor--this is a place owned by a cool Arab guy named Andy Shallal who supports progressive causes and hosts a lot of activist events. For example, he hosted and fed the women of Code Pink for their Mother's Day vigil last year, which is how I met him. So we all felt it was a righteous business to support. The place has always been insanely crowded every time I've been there. Washingtonians love it en masse.
After lunch we went for a long walk, through Shaw and Adams Morgan, to Dupont Circle and back. The Circle is a good-sized park and was totally crammed full of people today. This is a great neighborhood for Sunday afternoon outings. I used to work there, but had never been on a Sunday. We stopped at Beadazzled and I found an amethyst ring of exactly the sort I like best. I rarely find the exact kinds of rings I like, and when I do I buy them. I was dressed head to toe in purple again and when I said I was looking for amethyst my friends laughed and said I was starting to get predictable. Hey, I can't help it if purple looks good on me. I'm a "winter." The shop lady was in a good mood. No wonder, the weather brought out tons of people like us, who said what a nice day, let's go for a walk by the boutiques... Very good for business.
We took such a long time walking around and soaking up the warmth and sunshine of this beautiful day, it was dinnertime before we knew it, so we went to Thai Chef for dinner and I had a pretty decent vegetable green curry. We enjoyed another long walk back to my car, with lots of deep conversation, and stood a long time on the street corner group-hugging and saying goodbye as the sun went down. Then I gave one of my friends a ride back to her place on Capitol Hill. She's Pakistani and the better we get to know one another, the more important she becomes to me as someone I can talk to who totally understands the desi stuff I go through with family, culture, and religion, as I understand her stuff. We see life eye to eye a lot. One thing we disagreed about over lunch, she was bored with the DC Dyke March as much as I loved it. She's the one I wrote about I had seen at the march from a distance but didn't get to speak to then. Well, since then we've gotten a lot better about finding chances to get together.
Feeling so grateful for my dear girlfriends, the joy of friendship in sharing this perfect spring weather with people I love but don't see often enough. Somehow we found one another in this big crazy world...