At the playground with Ollie & the Weisenbergs

Ollie and I had the good fortune today to have my old friend Bruce Weisenberg and his lovely wife, Jiang Yan, stop by to spend a couple of hours with us. It had been a good solid seven years since I last saw Bruce, and I had yet to meet his wife. They, of course, had not yet met Oliver, so it was a wonderful opportunity to catch-up with one another in a context that is certainly a ubiquitous one in my life these days: the local playground.

Oliver has always been a social butterfly, but he seemed particularly enamored of Bruce and Jiang Yan, leading them around the playground from swing to slide as if he'd known them his whole life. If Bruce thought it odd seeing me interact with a two-and-a-half year-old (after years of knowing me as...well...someone not likely to be interacting with a two-and-a-half year-old), it was equally amusing - jarring, even - for me to see Bruce pushing Oliver around in a little toy car, looking every bit the bemused dad.

Old friends, new friends, times changing, people's lives evolving ... at the end of the day (and at the risk of over-the-top, cloying sentimentality), aren't these really  the moments that make life worth living?

 

Click on any of the above photos to view a larger image. Additional photos from this session are in my galleries beginning here.