Breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien

I had the same thought as Linda that breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien on West 65th St. was a long way from Giels—but maybe not so much. I think we both felt an immediate connection, as we swapped memories and filled in our life stories post-1964. There were even some intersections along the way. We overlapped in Boston when I was there in the mid-80s. I think Linda said that she was working at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston when my daughter was born there in 1985 (sorry if I got that wrong, Linda).

That's also where she met Phil, and began their marvelously successful life together. I enjoyed meeting Phil and briefly filling him in on how our family came to reside on Green Valley Drive in 1957. There's the three of us in the photo up top, and here is a snap of Linda at right.

I wish I had taken notes, because I know I'm forgetting some of the stories Linda shared. When I showed her how I scratched my leg on thorns during the orienteering meet, she reminded me that the woods were full of "jaggerbushes," and berry-picking was a big pasttime. That rang a bell for me since one of Walter's nicknames for Joanne back then was "Jori-Jaggerbush."

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was Linda's connection to Truro on Cape Cod, where our family used to vacation each year in the late 1950s and early 60s. We stayed at a funky cottage community in a place called Corn Hill. Linda told me that Jackie and Alan Fisher had honeymooned on Corn Hill in 1950, and thus it seems entirely likely that my parents, Stan and Helga, learned about Corn Hill from the Fishers.

Linda also discovered Truro and Corn Hill from Shelley Fisher when she had settled in the Boston area in the late 1970s. A few years ago, she and Phil built a vacation home in Truro not far from those funky cottages. She says they are still in place, though they were sold off as condos a few years back.

Linda has a daughter in Tiburon near us and she is very close with Shelley in Mill Valley, so that's another overlap on the not-to-distant journey from the North Hills of Pittsburgh to our present cosmopolitan lifestyles.

Following breakfast, Linda headed off to tend to home-furnishing arrangements while I was meeting my daughter and heading to the airport. Now that we have made a reconnection, we are both looking forward to keeping in touch through this blog and at a future reunion.