In mid-May, Bruce and Becky Hitchner came to visit us! I knew the Hitchners from France. Bruce Hitchner is an archaeologist and historian, who is now at Tufts University in Boston. He would go to Provence every summer to work on an archaeological dig there. He led a group of AAGP members (Anglo-American Group of Provence) on a tour of Glanum, a Roman settlement in Provence near St. Remy, in about 1985. I was about 12 and I remember that visit very well. At the end of that tour my parents approached him to ask if he would lead another group of AAGP members to Rome, and he agreed! So a group of us traveled to Rome by train and spent about 10 days visiting the different Roman sites in Rome, and also the port city of Ostia, which was amazing. I learned a huge amount from him, and became fascinated with the Romans, an interest that has lasted for decades and continues to this day, over thirty years later. Another family with a kid my age, the Jacobsons, with their 11 year old son, Jeremiah, came on that trip too. The Jacobsons were in Provence for about a year and I became friends with Jeremiah during that time. I remember strolling through Rome with Jeremiah and Bruce and Becky’s three year old son, Bret, both of us holding Bret’s hands and doing ‘one two three JUMP’ with him on the sidewalks of Rome. That was the beginning of our friendship with the Hitchners. They would come to Provence every summer to dig. Bruce was working on a site outside Arles, near the ruins of a Roman water mill – his focus at that time was Roman aqueducts and water systems. Several years later, when I was in high school, I joined him at the dig in Arles. I was only there a few days, but that experience made an outsized impression on me, as it proved to me that I could handle rugged fieldwork under challenging conditions (high heat, hard physical labor with shovels and no shade). With that experience, I knew that I could handle fieldwork of my own, studying animals in the wild. The high point of that dig was uncovering a piece of green, Roman glass, iridescent and beautiful. I remember picking it up and holding it in my dirty, sweaty, blistered palm. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I had dug it up, and was holding it, after it had been buried for almost two thousand years. There was probably a villa in that field, because the field was full of fragments of Roman rooftiles, all these little red terra cotta shards and pieces. And it was very close to the water mill, which was just outside the field area. But we didn’t know WHERE the villa was, so Bruce was having us dig exploratory holes to see if we could hit a wall or something. I hadn’t realized how difficult it might be to find a ruined house in a field, but if you think about it, ruined walls are quite narrow, so it’s hard to hit one! Aerial photography has really helped with this problem, as crops grow differently when they’re above ruins and walls, but hiring an airplane is expensive, so we were doing exploratory holes instead. As it turned out, we did not hit a wall that summer, but I was okay with that – I had uncovered that beautiful little piece of glass. However… the FOLLOWING summer they did more digging in that field, and they hit an archaeological treasure – a necropolis, or burial ground. They uncovered several skeletons, with all their grave goods, and studied them. The bodies dated back to the 5th century, at the end of the Roman Empire, and I remember Bruce noting that there didn’t seem much difference between the graves that predated the fall of the Roman Empire, and those that came after. Anyway, that is how we knew Bruce and Becky Hitchner. My parents had kept in touch with them over the years, and when I was an adult, I visited with them if my returns to Southern France overlapped with their summer visits. Our last visit together was in 2018 when we spent two weeks in Provence at Liz’s house. But the most recent chapter involves the pandemic, and Zoom. My Dad organized a monthly Zoom call with some of our friends from France: the Hitchners, the Jacobsons, and the Woodworths, who were another long-term resident American family in Provence with kids my age. The calls started in our old house, and continued every month after our move, and I really enjoyed them. We had great conversations, and everyone had interesting stories to tell about their lives now. It was great to get back in touch and renew those friendships, and I particularly enjoyed befriending them as an adult myself now. So when the Hitchners drove out to California for their daughter’s wedding, I invited them to stay with us! They visited lots of friends, all over the country, on this amazing cross-country driving trip. They stopped for one night with us. I made a fine multi-course dinner, which we had on the patio: spring salad with herbs and toasted seeds, mint and lemon lamb on homemade hummus, and fresh homemade bread, ending with a hazelnut dacquoise, which I’d been wanting to try for a long time (it’s a relative of the Castel cake.) We talked for hours, both that evening and the next morning, and had some great conversations. This is exactly how I enjoy socializing, and how I watched my parents socialize in France – socializing means good conversation over cocktails, followed by more good conversation over a delicious, multi-course dinner (outdoors, weather permitting), where we talk into the night. And that’s exactly what we did, covering all kinds of topics, fascinating ideas, and interesting events and reflections. We had another good visit over breakfast on the patio the next morning, then they were off to their next destination!