We counted the 7’s while never loosing sight of our “Hearts.” Our day of play began with the knowing format, or so we thought. We took our seats, shuffled the cards and waited for the expected silence while figuring out the hand we were dealt. Only this time we were all dealt the same hand. Nostalgic memories laced with an opportunity to dejavu our way through the next several hours. We threw the cards and shot the breeze. We counted so many more “remember when’s” than 7’s or Aces. Our fourth player who completed the game was a lovely friend of Joy’s named Michele from Cleveland. And yes, as fate would have it, like the corner piece in the puzzle, we knew people in common. She snapped our picture, marveled at how many years Roberta and I hadn’t seen each other as the connection was obvious indeed. Joy and I had connected through my last few winters in the sun. We are old, new friends. In teenage like fashion we talked over one another, giggled a lot and brought old names to mind of people we knew way back when. 

The beauty of the day was “the way back when’s we’re sitting at our table, and in between catching up and having so much fun, we got to play a little too. Joy couldn’t be sweeter and lives by the more the merrier creed. We played at Roberta’s home and she is as funny, kind and as easy going as I remembered. She not only had the dark, split pretzels I like sitting right next to the fresh fruit and popcorn- she smelled beautiful like Lily’s of the Valley and brought the bottle out so we could write down the name. 

My take away is when they say you can’t go back home, it’s only because they didn’t grow up in Passaic. Yesterday was “Mighty Mighty Great!