Circling Back With An Old Friend
Jeff!
Here we are again — finally!
By my brother’s count, this is the third house I’ve purchased in 6 years, which means I have spent approximately 3 of the last 6 years settling into a new place. When you’re doing that much moving, stuff starts to leave. First, you give away the piles of clothes and trinkets and the “I may need it someday” items. With each new move, you pare down a bit more until one day you’re sitting in Mississippi staring at a box containing your sacred treasures of youth. I’m talking about the items you’ve carried along far too long: things like the orange belt from Judo in 8th grade (which I tricked my dad into letting me try), and the patchwork quilt of hand-embroidered frogs from your 9th grade Girl Scout troop (yes, I was still a GS in high school).
Things like letters and journals from high school and college.
This is where I found you again, Old Friend, in the manila envelope stuffed with letters written between teenagers in the late 70s, when one of us was transported to the opposite coast in the middle of high school. I’m not sure how we started the letter writing. At some point we were just two of a group of kids hanging out; you dated my best friend and I dated yours. We never dated each other, yet there was an undeniable meeting of minds, so I guess when I moved to Virginia from California it just made sense to stay in touch. (Of course, the epic Running Away From Home Night might have had something to do with our connection, too!)
Since our friendship blossomed well before the internet and email, all of our letters were handwritten, slipped into an envelope, and mailed, only to be found decades later as I begin to scrape to the bottom of what “sparks joy” as I lighten my material load.
When re-read some of these letters, I wondered about you and your wife and family. I wondered how we so utterly and completely lost track of such a deep friendship in the midst of steering our lives. Wondered what you are doing today, and what thoughts you are thinking. After all these years, how much of you has changed, and how much was a core truth that has remained constant?
It actually made me wonder the same about myself: how much has changed, how much is constant?
So, I’m writing you to catch up on all the things I’ve missed in your life in the last 40 years, but I think I also want something more. Something I literally did not realize until I started typing. I want to compare the teenagers with the adult versions of ourselves and see what happened as we looped out, away from each other and into our individual lives.
Who did we become?
Let’s circle back and share our stories, deeply and richly.
What do you say?
Ann
