A college classmate and friend of some 55 years’ standing emailed me from his native Mexico this summer with a reminder of an important event in our friendship. Carlos alerted me to the 35th anniversary, a few weeks earlier, of our having watched together Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.

That summer, now seeming long ago, I was visiting Mexico in order to take part in a professional workshop in Cuernavaca. Afterward, I had the pleasure of visiting Carlos and his wife Leni in Mexico City. They are the ones who first uttered a greeting that I had never heard before. They welcomed me with the Spanish proverb, “Mi casa es su casa” (my home is your home), and fulfilled it magnificently.

Not only did they ply me with refreshing tequilas and tasty tamales but they gave me the best bedroom in their house, introduced me to members of their extended family, and showed me the wonders of Mexico City. They set a new standard of hospitality, one that I still consider unsurpassed.

That July 20th, Carlos and Leni had taken me for lunch to the home of their relatives, some dozens of miles from the capital. We had intended to return to Mexico City to watch the landing on the moon but lunch was late and we would not have been able to reach home in time.

Fortunately, one of Carlos’s brothers lived in Texcoco, a town only a few miles short of our original goal. This town, though small, once played an important role in Mexican history; from it came the first indigenous allies of Cortes and his invading Spanish forces.

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Carlos tells me, the Texcocans were vassals of the Nahuatls and not happy about this status. For that reason they took advantage of Cortes’ arrival and allied themselves with him. This alliance enabled the conquistador, though he had an army of only a few dozen Spaniards, to overthrow the great Mexican empire.

When I visited, Texcoco-still a rural village- presented a memorable contrast with the thrilling spectacle that we watched on television that evening. We were observers of one of the greatest technological feats in the history of the world, while sitting in a town that showed few effects of modern science.

I felt myself privileged to be there with such marvelous friends as together we hailed Neil Armstrong’s triumphant message “The Eagle has landed.”  

“One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” was the trenchant phrase the moonwalker used to characterize that epic event. The excitement of that evening and the contrast between a small town in rural Mexico and the new terrain of the moon has stayed with me ever since.

My reason for noting this anniversary, belatedly to be sure, is not simply to celebrate the historic triumph of that date but also to underscore the values in long friendship and those that come from contact with people of nations other than one’s own.

My friend Carlos remains an alter ego of mine despite too few face-to-face meetings through the years. That makes especially precious the opportunities for actually seeing one another. When he visited Cambridge last spring, for instance, we had the pleasure of recollecting some of the experiences we shared in college and since that time.

In later life, Carlos retains the courtly manners that helped forge our friendship originally. Like others among us, he even improved himself through marriage with a charming and talented woman. He and Leni are blessed in their five adult children and their 12 grandchildren.

Their family tradition is doubly rich in the combination of German descent and Mexican heritage. In my contacts with them I feel myself culturally enhanced as I draw upon their store of experiences different from my own. I also value their spiritual tradition, one that Carlos and I found compatible early on when we belonged to a prayer group together during our college days.

Although the moon walk stands out as one of the great shared experiences in the history of our friendship, conversation, letters, and now email, maintain ongoing links. But ours is a solid enough relationship that sometimes years can pass without contact and that neglect does not spoil it.

In a letter written to another friend, Carlos recently said of me: he “looks his age, he walks slowly and stoops a bit.”  Apparently to make me less decrepit, he added: “but his face is fresh and, mostly, he continues to be very active.”

In response, I summoned up my remarkable objectivity, and refuted his erroneous opinion. How could he possibly have made that judgment about my sleek self? Clearly, he suffered the disadvantage of never seeing me play Sunday softball and sometimes actually getting a base hit.

But old is good, in my book, and this enduring friend does me no disservice by words suggestive of oncoming decrepitude. Though in time the natural forces of decline will finally separate us, nothing will negate the blessings of this friendship.

Richard Griffin