Friendship

Saturday afternoon my friend, Liz and I walked through the Washington Park Arboretum. It was a first for us both and we were equally amazed. Miles and miles of walking trails zig zagged through fields and along the Causeway between Lake Washington and Lake Union.
Equipped with my camera, I took a lot of photos. I was mostly enthralled with the landscape; shooting ponds, boats and pathways. But as we were walking through a clearing I saw these two women, deep in conversation and oblivious to the image they portrayed.
I wondered to myself: "what is their story? why are they wearing those hats and do they do this often?"
Not wanting to be rude and ask, I decided to make up my own story:
Mary and Julie were friends as children. Mary's parents uprooted her family and moved to the East Coast when she was just 10. On Mary's moving day she made a promise to Julie to come back to Washington every year to visit. Correspondence was strong at first. Weekly letters in the mail, monthly phone calls permitted by their parents. But as time wore on and the girls grew up, they're conversations became few and far between.
Mary grew up to be an ER nurse while Julie travelled the world and spent many years in the Peace Corp. After Julie had a nearly fatal accident in Brazil the summer of 1992, she packed up and moved back to the Pacific Northwest. The transition was hard at first, but with the support of her family and friends she managed to pull her life back together and became a Spanish teacher at a local community college.
It was the first day of school and Julie was taking attendance. Her eyes grew big as she recognized a unique last name on her roster. After class she took this familiar stranger aside and asked if she happened to be related to her long-lost friend. At her amazement, the young girl not only knew her, but was her daughter.
It turned out Mary divorced her doctor/husband and moved back to the West Coast only 2 years prior. Not knowing Julie's new last name and finding that both of her parents had passed, she stopped searching after a year. But that afternoon, on that first day of school, the two friends reunited in the courtyard.
They discovered that they'd only been living 3 miles from each other these past two years and immediately picked back up where they left off. They watched each other's children, cried on each other's shoulders and giggled at the little things they used to find so amusing. One of their fondest memories was dressing up like the Queen and having high tea in the back yard. They told and re-told the stories of how they put on ridiculous hats and pranced around in the grass, laughing merrily the whole time.
For Mary's 45th birthday, Julie surpised her with hats and a walk through the Arboretum. They sporadically broke in and out of character; one moment pretending to be the Queen and the next laughing uproariously. From that day on, they made a habit of this silly tradition and took weekly walks together. In time, the concept of playing the Queen wore off, but the hats remained. And so it was on the 7th of April, 2007 that they were meandering through the Arboretum when they were noticed by two friends on a similar path.