Another adventure with an "old" friend

On Friday I wrote about a trip with old friends to a lake house in Connecticut. About a week after that outing, I went on another mini-adventure with Margaret, another old friend.

My postings were delayed because I couldn't figure out how to put more than one photo on a page. Thanks Susan for walking me through it over the phone from California. I was beginning to feel really photo-phobic.

Margaret and I have been friends since meeting as cub reporters at our first job at the old Holyoke Transcript-Telegram. Although we now live across the state from each other, we've managed to stay super-close and see each other frequently. We've been through a lot together.

Since she lives in the Boston area, she and Diane were my bedrocks during my post-relapse hospitalizations. They stood "in loco Lynne," i.e. in place of my late mother, Lynne, who was with me all the time during my first bout. Margaret was the one who was with me in the clinic the day I learned I had relapsed. These days, she often meets me downtown before or after a clinic visit to share good news and shore me up when my counts, and my mood, are down.

It was fun to go on an outing unrelated to health issues. We drove about 45 minutes west of my house to the town of Middlefield, revisiting a waterfall we had marveled at together many years ago. We went to Glendale Falls, which is one of the longest and most powerful waterfalls in the state. Katie and Margaret's son Natty came along. (In the photo, I'm the one on the left with the pouffy hair.)

When we got there, we all started walking down the steep path that leads through the woods to a beautiful pool at the bottom of the waterfall. I didn't go very far, suddenly getting suspicious about the possibility of the fungus aspergillus lurking in the moist soil. People with compromised immune systems are susceptible to infection, as I learned the hard way four years ago when I developed a fungal pneumonia, possibly picked up in my garden, and had to have lung surgery to remove it.

Margaret and Natty scampered down to the bottom while Katie and I retreated to a warm rock where we laid out our picnic. Soon Margaret and Natty joined us, and we enjoyed our food and their friendship, the sound of the waterfall roaring not far away.