Almost Family from Day One

When my parents dropped me off at college, they didn’t get the chance to meet my new roommate or her parents before heading home. That evening, I met her for the first time and thought, She’s nice. This will work.

A day later, after my parents returned home, my dad got a call from his great-aunt Gertrude—who was almost like a grandmother to him. It turns out Gertrude, a nurse, had been best friends with my roommate’s grandmother, Doris, who had since passed away.

As if that weren’t enough, Doris had been a nurse in the hospital ward when I was born—and she was the one who gave my mother a back rub during labor.

After hearing that, I felt a lot of pressure to get along with my roommate! But as it turned out, we didn’t need any help from fate—we roomed together all four years of college and have been close friends for nearly forty years since.