But I saw the eyes of one of the donkeys set on me, and I knew. It was Jean-François. The pet I’d walked into the hills late one night that had tried to follow me home.

Justine saw the look on my face.

“Now you are going to cry,” she declared.

“Unlikely,” I answered.

I turned away so she wouldn’t see my tears.  In my arms, my baby was fretting. Justine looped an arm around my waist.

“You have a soft heart,” she said. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

We both laughed then. No one knew me the way she did, not even Frederic. Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times. I went ahead and let myself cry, then pulled myself together.

From “The Marriage of Opposites,” Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman writes terrific prose. Her descriptions of sceneries are so impressive that they remind me of Joseph Conrad’s.  In this snippet, we cannot appreciate it. But I selected it because I thought she made a remarkable observation: “Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.”

I don’t know that this statement applies to most people. Our experiences mold us so much over the years.  Perhaps, if a friend grows next to you during youth and adulthood, as it is the case in this novel, the statement might be correct. One thing I am certain: if you are a close friend of someone in your youth, no matter how long you are disconnected with this person, once you get together again years later, it is as if time had never passed.