A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a message on my Facebook page that I might have never even noticed if my sister hadn’t told me she had sent me something there. I rarely even look at Facebook much these days. But what I found is a message from a friend that I have not seen or heard from in nearly 20 years, ever since I left Mill Valley and moved to the Kansas City area in 1995. I had even tried to find this friend myself at times but never could find him. Well, he found me!
So I was then invited to meet him and some other “old” friends at a restaurant in Novato yesterday for lunch. He didn’t tell the others that I would be there and, amazingly, they recognized and remembered me – what a trip. And despite all the years, I would swear most of them looked remarkably the same as before.
It was fun hearing the stories and remembering the things we used to do. One thing we used to do a lot of is to drink a lot of beer – but these days I guess we’ve all learned some moderation. I had my limit of two beers and nobody else was drinking much more than that, if at all.
You know I’ve wondered at times why it seems to be that I have all these different phases of my life where there never seems to be any connecting threads between them. It’s like closing one phase and starting over again brand new. I left the Bay Area and ended that “phase” when I moved to Kansas, where I met new people, got married, had a child – and it was just a different life; I did not keep in touch with anyone from before. Then I moved back to California and left all that behind. Started my life again here in Petaluma – with all new people. That seems to have been a definite pattern with me. Never carrying any connecting threads with me.
So it felt really good to reconnect with these people; as if nothing – all these last 20 years – had come between. Kind of strange, at least for me. I wonder if any of this is due to being moved so much when I was a kid – always going somewhere else, being the “new kid” at school over and over. Losing friends. And I just never was able somehow to carry on friendships over time and distance like some people seem to do. And it’s almost like I don’t ever expect others to remember me after I’m gone. I’m not sure why that is either.
But I did have a really nice time yesterday and I hope to be able to stay in touch; friends are a good thing to have!