Giving thanks

The phone kept ringing yesterday, right around lunchtime. First, it was distant relations, calling for my cousins. Then it was my cousins, calling to wish us a happy Thanksgiving. Then it was my uncle, calling to do the same. My family was acting a bit strangely, but I didn't really think anything of it -- they can be that way sometimes. I was minding my own business, taking pictures in my grandmother's back yard as people talked, and it wasn't until she handed me the phone that I realized something was up.

"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"Is this Rachel?"
"...Yes?"
"Do you know who this is?"
"...No?"
"You don't know who this is?!"

"...oh my God."

It was Claudia. It was around 12:30 our time when she called, so in Romania, it was 7:30pm, well after dark. She was standing in the main square of the citadel in Sighisoara, one of the places we went last summer, talking to me on a public phone. I haven't heard her voice since May, and I certainly wasn't expecting to hear it now.

She's doing well. I think she's doing well. We talked for a long time about nothing in particular. It was 70 degrees in Corpus Christi, and a few degrees below freezing in Sighisoara. It was so, so good to hear her voice.