So we’re lying on the hotel king bed clicking from one station to the next. (Is this what we’re missing by not having a TV at home!?). Trudy’s phone rings. It’s Ben. He says Colin is in town and wants to give us a call.
Colin! Holy cow. Not only did we find out at the last minute that Ben was in DC that weekend, but now we find out that my cousin’s youngest son is too. We couldn’t have planned this better if we had tried.
Here’s what I imagine happened…
Ben is in the Ohio room with the 90 other students from Oberlin and all the other Ohioans. Colin is with the Michigan room with the Kalamazoo students and all the other Michiganders. But Colin he wants to see Daniel, a friend who goes to Oberlin, so he leaves the Michigan room and walks down the hall to Ohio.
Now it just so happens that Ben and Daniel are friends. And so when Colin walks into the Ohio room, Ben sees him. I picture him standing up and shouting across a sea of chairs as Colin enters the room.
“Colin? You’re here, too!?”
We met Colin the next day in Chinatown for lunch. We ordered way too much food, and Trudy and I pushed back early, shamefully leaving much food uneaten. But you see, this was Colin. When he saw us push away, I swear I saw his eyes light up, and I know I heard him mutter something about peanut butter sandwiches. And within minutes, there was nothing left.
We talked about school. We talked about weather. We talked about the conference. And I remember so little of it, because I was just sitting there smiling, watching my cousin’s son talk.
This is so important to me. I’m the only one in my family west of the Mississippi, and we don’t get to see each other enough, and now the boys are grown up, anyway, so even if we could coordinate our schedules more often, the boys probably couldn’t make it. And so the risk of getting disconnected is so great. But here we are sitting in a tiny restaurant in Chinatown in DC eating and chatting and connecting.
It was time to go. Colin had to catch his Michigan bus. We were going to the Vietnam and Lincoln Memorials. So the three of us walked together for a while up K Street, and at 18th Street Colin turned north, and we turned south.
I turned to watch him walking away, long strides in the sun, backpack over his shoulders.
I wonder when we’ll see him again.