Skip to main content

Old friends new

I drank coffee with an old friend this morning -- someone I haven't seen since around June of 1993 when we graduated from high school. We hooked up on Facebook a few months ago, and I'm so glad we did. She's smart and fun and kind -- always has been -- in fact, she was one of the two girls who befriended me immediately when we moved to my new school at the start of seventh grade. (I know...you and I both shudder at the thought of starting new school in 7th grade!)

Friday I spent an hour chatting online with another high school friend who I hadn't spoken to in over 10 years. We chatted easily, laughed about shared memories, gushed about our spouses, even talked abut mundane daily stuff like what books we're reading and music we're listening to. He revealed some interesting, truthful impressions of me in high school that made me simultaneously smile and cringe. There are a couple other friends I've discovered now live right down the road and have kids the same age as mine; others who now live in faraway states and countries and have fabulous careers.

I could go on and on about my recently rekindled Facebook relationships -- friends from as far back as kindergarten have appeared and I love getting to know them again. What strikes me most about these reconnections is that although I liked these people as their 16-year-old selves, they're really so much more interesting now. It sounds obvious and ridiculous, but really, we're all full-fledged people -- no longer masses of hormones and emotions centered on who likes whom or stressing about how long to study for Friday's test. We've all been shaped much more by the post-high-school years, and we all carry our own scars, large and small. We deal with similar challenges; we have similar humor and hopes.

Not many of us are where we pictured ourselves way back then, but I get the impression we all like our now selves much more. What I love most is that we're all reconnecting in the present -- not sitting around waxing nostalgic about the good old days. But it's really nice to have roots.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A boy and his cat

Our backyard is a decent size and backs to woods. Every time a visitor steps onto our back deck, friend, family, and neighbor alike, we hear "What a yard! You need to get that kid a dog!" Apparently this is the natural progression here in Suburbia: house + yard + boy child + dog = happiness. Now, it's one thing to hear about our need of dog from friends or family who know us, but coming from neighbors and relative strangers it gets a bit old. My first response is always, Why do you think so? Which makes people hem and haw because they don't want to insult me by saying what's really on their minds: Because you're depriving that child of a human sibling , and he needs a friend . One problem: We're not dog people. I mean, we like other people's dogs, and I often think having a dog would be a major motivation to walk long distances regularly and get myself into shape. But a dog is like a toddler who will never grow up. They are needy, and they bark and poo...

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...