Yesterday included a very pleasent surprise in the form of Sandy and her beautiful little girl, Caitie, dropping by work (she’s the one who got me the job here before callously leaving to have her baby). So I joined her, Bhavna, and Sandhya for a nice stroll over the Steak & Ale to get Salad & Water – what’s wrong with me? It was mucho fun, and since I keep missing out on chances to see the two of them (oh yeah, and Steve), way too delayed. I took a bunch of pictures, and as soon as I decide the direction my photo gallery is going, they will be posted.
It’s nice getting caught up with friends that you don’t get to see that often anymore. A couple weeks ago my friend Anthony (that’s Antnee to you) came over from San Fran with his girlfriend for a brief visit. Anthony and I were complete strangers when I moved into my second Hoboken apartment. We met not longer after I began hanging out at the Nag’s regularly. Within a month we had grown incredibly close, swapping life stories, a few secrets, and even a late night pickup at the airport (which resulted in the death of my car battery, thank you very much). Unfortunately that all changed when he moved back to the West Coast. Neither of us is the best of long distance communicators, so contact has been sparse. Nevertheless, it feels wonderful to reconnect (which reminds me, I have to e-mail him soon).
I’ve started thinking about this recently, because I don’t have nearly the number of longtime friends that Lisa has. She talks to people who have known her since she was in third grade. None of my friends of acquaintances at this juncture in my life met me before college. Even my college buddies have dwindled over time (and some didn’t really even become friends until after the fact). Most of this is unintentional, people drift apart, move away, become involved, etc. Some people you let go by the wayside because you just don’t fit together. And of course there are relationship that end in fights. Whatever the reasons, I find myself with a fairly different set of friends every couple of years.
There’s one particular person who I do miss terribly. But we’re both awful at keeping in touch, and the addition of my girlfriend made it even more difficult for us to get together. That hurts, but it’s a common situation and one almost impossible to avoid. But circumstances make it difficult to pick up where we left off, and could just make the whole friendship too awkward at this point. Nevertheless, I would not balk at the idea of talking on the phone again.
There’s another one. A very special one. One who I said goodbye to many years ago. Is there an expiration date for friendship? I’ve imagined many times going to see her again, but I begin to doubt whether or not the image in my mind of such a beautiful relationship could withstand the reality of such mental distances. Who knows, but maybe someday I’ll be on her doorstep once again just to say, “How the hell are you?”
Hmm, this went in a very different direction than I had intended. Now speaking of the mighty insect life of Montclair seems rather silly. That’ll have to wait ’til later.
Just to let you know friendships never expire. Case in point, I left a friend in Canada when I moved here at the age of seven. 18 years later she gave me a call and let me tell you the relationship (although long distance) is a much better reality than the image I had in my head. Hey, and if the image shatters at least you’ll stop driving yourself crazy with ‘what if?’
I know what you mean, and I pretty much already knew that answer. Someday (hopefully soon) when I really feel like my life is in order, I will try to reconnect with some of my old friends. Maybe I better hurry up with that getting in order bit seeing as how my 10 year reunion is coming up!
See this sort of thing is kind funny to me. I’m so bad at keeping in touch with people, so I routinely have those, “Hey, I haven’t talked to you in 3 years. How the hell are you?” moments.
Heck one of my best friends in the world is Ruby, and she lives four hours away. Neither of us ever remembers to call or write or anything, but we’re still completely in sync. When we get together we just pick up where we left off. I just saw her this weekend and spent literally the enitre thing (sans a very few hours sleeping) talking with her about everythign under the sun. (We also drank serious amounts of wine. Lucky we like the same reds, eh?)
When we need each other, we just know, and we’re there for one another. Our lives even tend to have strange symmetry. For example, our husbands both got depressed about work at around the same time and both had career shifts that made them happy at aroudn the saem time. Ruby and I have both recently started getting therapy for suprisingly similar issues, even though they come from completely different places. And I recently started creatively writing again. This weekend I found out that Ruby finally started writing again as well, AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME I did.
So, long story short, real friendship doesn’t die. Some friendships are just different from others.