Meet Me for Lunch Tomorrow?
When I went to the UK for the very first time, it was on a business trip. It was escorted from publisher to publisher by a dear friend I’d known for 9 years a that time. He was a buttoned up Brit. I was an American with too much personality. He was my credibility with the rest of the British citizens and publishers I was meeting along the way.
I was such an interesting experience to spend this time with a friend of so many years and so much time spent talking on this side of the water. I knew him well. We had many times over cognac figured out how to solve all of the problems of publishing and the greater world. We knew each other’s foibles, idiosyncracies, and downsides, and still loved each other.
He knew how self-conscious I was about folks who pick up me at the airport. I knew that no one ever saw him in a shirt without buttons up the front.
Still it was revealing to see him in his natural habitat.
On the day before I left the UK, he dropped me at my hotel and said, “Shall we have a leisurely lunch before I take you to Heathrow tomorrow?”
I said, “It depends on who comes to the door.”
A slightly sad, shy smile crossed his eyes, not his mouth. He’d said from the day we met he loved the American sense of irony. That was his way of saying he liked the way I told him the truth.
“And what would the lady prefer?” was his answer.
“I’d like YOU to SHOW UP — all of you. Not that guy in the tie I’ve been with all week. If HE comes, I’m closing the door, eating lunch alone, and taking a taxi to Heathrow. That guy is boring.”
He said, “I understand.”
The next day, a man with a grin showed up. He was live, wearing a sweater over his buttoned up shirt. We had lunch at a bistro that served the most wonderful fruit brûlée. I can’t tell you what we talked about. I don’t remember, but I remember we laughed a lot.
He was there. It was real. It was what friendship is about.
He showed up and he has ever since.
I can’t tell you how my world has been better because of it.
It really means something when you know someone will be there.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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.Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.
