A day to treasure

Yesterday I had the kind of day I won't be able to have more of as my disease progresses and then kills me over the next year or so.
A friend came out from the city in the late afternoon and we had dinner. Her husband was with friends watching a football playoff game. She and I have no interest in the sport. We've known each other for over twenty years, though good times and some bad ones. I've learned a lot from her, far more than I could possibly have taught her, but that's not the basis of our friendship.
I met her at a train station less than a mile from me, we went to my house and had coffee. At dusk we took the walk I do around my neighborhood. She liked it and understood the beauty I see in parts of it. 

My friend getting off a train for a visit.

Around six, we went to a good Japanese restaurant near me. (She's Japanese and I lived there for three years. We met in Philadelphia.) We ordered a boatload of food. Literally, a boatload: the food came on a small wooden boat. We'd stopped at a liquor store beforehand and bought a very nice brand of sake she'd wanted to try and drank that. 
I haven't told her of my illness, so our conversation was about normal things. The funny things her husband—who I've met several times and like—does and says. How her parents are doing in Tokyo. Her job. The cat she got as a Christmas gift.
She brought me special noodles that the Japanese prepare at the beginning of the new year. (I'll make some tonight.) She caught the 8:35 back to the city.
Yesterday was a day I'll look back on with great fondness many times over the coming months.