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Archive for March 2nd, 2005
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005Reconnection
The day the boxes arrived from New Hampshire, I piled them in my guest room and forgot about them for a few days. I was busy, afterall. But a week later, with rain sluicing down the gutters and nothing else to do, I dragged one out and pried it open.
I had spent the holidays in New Hampshire where I had been given the daunting task of going through my parent’s attic and sorting through all my childhood memories. What to keep? What to throw away? There were stuffed toys, fur rubbed off and eyes missing; favorite books; scrapbooks of all my sporting events; yearbooks; old jewelry; a cracked porcelain figurine of a cat; and letters…lots and lots of letters that I had saved over the years. A scarce amount of things went into the garbage; most of the stuff went into boxes to be shipped back to California.
So on this particular rainy day in California, I began to open the boxes. Before long I was immersed in the letters that my best friend in junior high school had sent to me when she and her family moved out of state at the end our our ninth grade year of school. We had exchanged daily letters over a two year period; and I had saved every one. As I read I laughed, I cried, I remembered the pain of adolescence and the struggle to be adults when we were still just children. All our thoughts, fears, joys and confessions were scrawled in those letters. I sat back and wondered where my childhood friend was now. We had lost touch, as people do, and I had not spoken to her in well over 20 years.
I logged onto my computer and spent less than an hour on the Internet to find my friend. With a bit of apprehension, but mostly excitement, I dialed her phone number; got an answering machine; and left a message. Ten minutes later the phone rang and I was speaking to my old friend! The years melted away as we talked. Our lives had taken us miles apart and we had traveled diverse pathways, but within an hour we had bridged the gaps.
I am left with the feeling that what is important in our lives is not the money we make or the homes we build; it’s not the scenery we view or the jobs we hold. What is important are the people; the relationships; the sharing of dreams and joys and sorrows. And that is something for which we must always find the time.