Area Code 503

 Overnight I got a text message from an old friend. I almost didn't see it because I thoought it was Spam. I get maybe thirty a day, most of them because of previous political donations.  I thought the text was one of those. I didn't recognize the number and I almost deleted it from the notification on the screen

The area code was 503--Oregon, but that meant nothing because that is still my area code from the phone I bought in the mall in Beaverton ten years ago when I got first i-Phone Then I saw the name at the end of the message and I knew who it was. 

I have gone many years now without conversing with him. But we did not see each other many years after college as well, and once you have a long gap with someone, followed by a time of reacquaintance, one knows that at some point time doesn't matter. Both of us have a bearing on each other's characters that stretches of time, in a temporal triangulation over decades, such that, especially after a certain age, we can never be strangers to each other.

He still lives in the small small town outside of Portland where he and his wife have operated their law practice for many decades. Since I last talked with him, they sold the law practice, and the building it was located in, and are now retired. 

He asked if I was still in Oregon. I haven't lived there for eight years. I told him I lived in Arizona now. He asked me if I liked Scottsdale. I said it had great medical care---best specialists in the world---which is something that can be plus especially as you get past a certain age in life. That's all I said about it.

I explained how we wound up here, and how we moved here for Jessica's job, and later for her practice, but now she is completely remote, whereas I am the one with the hybrid office job. Also it is quite enjoyable that Jessica's parents live in the Valley now, in a 55+ RV and trailer-house park in Mesa, which is like a non-stop Boomer party and summer camp eight months out of the year. The community of it is amazing. I tell them I don't think Generation X can pull off a continuation of it. Starting with my cohort, youth lost its communalness of youth culture, until it came back with a vengeance with the current rootless  identity tribalism of today's young folk.

I told him I'd love to come back to Oregon sometime, and to visit the suburbs of Portland.