together Tuesdays

Longmont CO

welcome to together tuesdays, where I tell you of connections I made last week.

Longmont CO

I made three memorable connections last Saturday, more nice interactions than that but three that stuck with me and made my heart swell.

 We three decided to drive up and retrieve my lunch bag I left at the quilt store when I met Mary in a town called Erie. (It held an important ice pack) If you remember, I wanted to join a friend group there but it's too expensive. I asked about this high price and found out they have other cheaper or free friend groups also meeting there. One is handwork too! Okay then!

1. Since we were going that far north, I called our friends Diann and Mike to meet for lunch. They were free and drove down to meet us in a midway town named Longmont.
Ahhhhh seeing them is like doing a dance you know well, like hearing a happy song, like putting on a soft sweater. It's easy and comfortable. Conversation is smart and lively, and they are so nice to Milo.
We enjoyed catching up a bit, the day's sunshine before the next storm, and a good meal.


After lunch we wondered what to do. We thought we had seen the town of Longmont, but Diann said there was a wonderful section of original homes to walk around. Hmmmm my goal was to see some area I hadn't seen, but no towns nearby interested us.
We found the more active part of downtown Longmont that we missed last time, and walked around there for a bit, shopping at a cool shoe store.
No shoes but I had an interesting chat with two ladies, both had beloved dogs and loved Milo in his freshly bathed and groomed haircut.

2. We walked around Roosevelt Park, built by a woman who moved to Longmont when it started in 1860's

for some reason she's shown as a giraffe???

She loved it enough to finanace a park, and went there to hear a speech by Theodore Roosevelt! It was a nice size, open with a pool and skating rink, and half mile path around.

bronze embedded in rock in honor of the donor

 I stopped to look at an odd sculpture, as a smiling woman was taking a picture of it. We began to chat. She was visiting the town with her husband who was working, and they live in the upper peninsula of Michigan. As it turned out we had so much in common!
We are both artists
we both paint and work with fabric
There were other excited moments where we said, "so do I!!"
We probably could have happily visited each other's studios if we lived in the same town.
Isn't that amazing? And we shared our artwork from our phones. Her quilts were lovely, long and narrow, vegetables made with long roots, very brilliant colors. She paints them on fabric with colored pencil and oil pastels.
The 15 minutes we talked was like fuel to my soul.... a quick ephemeral meeting. Another one of those meetings that felt like I was meant to meet her and hear her wisdom.

She told me to consider that I'm meant to write and illustrate books.

3. Buoyed by these lovely interactions, we then set off to walk around the old homes.
I felt such an attraction to the neighborhood. Lovely old sidewalks of slate, wide lawns between streets and sidewalks, lovely porches, great views of the mountains. Architecture from Victorian to Edwardian, my favorites for this country.

We walked all around but as dusk approached, and we had an hour's drive home, we began to reluctantly head back to the car. Home lights glowed yellow as people settled in for the night.

Stunned by a magnificent sunset we stopped to take pictures. I felt such an affinity for this area, so like where I grew up, so lovely that I was reluctant to leave.
Turning back to the car, I spied two women and a mini aussie on their porch swing.

We all exclaimed over the mild temps and that sunset. They put the dog in the house and happily came over, arms outstretched to shake hands, and introduced themselves. A woman and her daughter, who lived in many places but now own this house, built in 1891,  with one owner who kept it as it was and left it to the historic society. The current owner bought it from the society and has been slowly repairing it to original shape.
She was a bright light in the evening... happy and sunny. Her dog was a service dog for her daughter who had seizures, and therefore not as stranger friendly as other dogs.
(you never know what people are dealing with do you?)
I loved this woman from the first moment she reached out her hand to me and smiled.
I loved her bright  happy daughter who was so open and friendly.
We all chatted about moving around, settling in an area, what it's like to rehab an old home. She loves antiques and old architecture, she grew up in England and suggested the show Grand Design, she makes the trek down to our area regularly to the children's hospital for her daughter.
She said she loves her neighborhood but when a house does go on market there is a crazy bidding war and prices are very high. She said if we ever come back to visit or buy, to make sure to stop in for another chat.

She also shared a bit of wisdom. She said to take heart, to use the next few years to go through our belongings and find the next place to move, not to mire down in the discontent of having moved where we did.

I felt like we parted as old friends.
You can't ask more of a meeting than that can you?

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