The summer after my junior year of high school, my family answered an ad in the newspaper and Emmanuelle from Paris came to stay with us for a month. That was one of the best decisions of our lives. We had had plenty of exchange students before, and they were ok, but Emmanuelle was completely sympatique. I think she got placed with us because we were both Jewish. We had that in common, both Reform, but Julia (my sister), Emmanuelle, and I also all loved camp. We sang the same type of camp songs and understood the connection to camp, its rituals and goofiness, on the same deep level. We were the same type of people.

Emmanuelle remembers every minute of that month. I had forgotten we went windsurfing and dumped ourselves in Green Lake or that she had met my boyfriend, Darrel. (She is the only person in my life right now, aside from my family, who has met Darrel, Eric, and John. It's sort of stunning to think of someone who knows you that long and deeply.) I had not forgotten how we went running, hiking, and swimming. It was an absolutely stellar month, one that actually brought my sister and me closer together. We took a photo of me and Julia on the hike we all did to Franklin Falls, and that's the photo I took with me to put up on my wall in college.

We kept the relationship up. Julia went to visit. When I was a student in Paris second semester junior year, Emmanuelle was my best buddy, and then that summer we traveled around Europe together. (That's where she met Eric who joined us.) Then in '90 Emmanuelle was living in New York, so she visited me and John in Boston and came to Julia's graduation from Penn and met Greg.

Yes, my French friend Emmanuelle met her future husband Greg at my sister's graduation. You can see how delightfully intertwined our lives became. We went to their wedding.

The only bummer with her marrying Greg is she then had a place in the States she needed to visit, so we have yet to be able to lure her or the kids back to Seattle. I can't say we stayed in close contact, the last time we were back was ten years ago, the trip that nearly killed me. Can I just say, don't ever travel with a toddler. But seeing her and Greg again was like picking up with a college friend, the one who immediately jumps to what really matters. It was thrilling to be with them. I also loved their children. Jean-Julian was off at college, but Samuel, a senior was engaging and great to talk history and politics with over dinner and their ten year old daughter, Maya, charming.

We stayed in their home, which made life incredibly easy. I didn't realize how easy until the last night when we were in the hotel and the motorcycle raced its engine late at night and the garbage trucks started banging away early in the morning. We could have healthy leisurely breakfasts and healthy leisurely dinners, and then indulge like crazy during the day.