Some days it is the bane of my existence. Friend requests from people I hardly talked to in high school, some I may have met once through a mutual friend, and occasionally even a person I have truly never met in my entire life. Status updates such as "I am now at home" (neat), "Little Timmy finally pooped in the big boy potty!" (gross), or "Oh no you didn't just say that to me." (how passive aggressive)... it's to be expected from teenagers, and even the early-twenties crowd, they feel entitled to have their voices heard. But those of us pushing thirty, and up: No one cares. No one.
Then there's the positive side: being a part of friends' lives who have moved to different states, following pictures of rapidly growing babies and children, having things to talk about with real friends you haven't seen lately and the ability to still feel connected. And there's always the possibility of a reconnection.
That brings us back to Jasmine, Erin, and me. Jasmine had been a professional dancer, traveled the world, and lived in the Pacific Northwest before making her way back to her hometown; Erin spent years in the Bay Area after graduating from Cal Poly before migrating home; I had moved home after graduating college in Santa Barbara, gotten married, taught elementary school for a couple years, and had a baby. We had all come from, and were currently in, very different places in life. But one day, soon after Erin had moved back to SLO, she sent out a Facebook message suggesting a get together. A very casual coffee date.
At that time, Jasmine and I had practically been neighbors for over a year, but due to very different lives, and settling into our niche with the hometown friends we'd already connected with, we simply hadn't made plans together. I would literally pass her house several times a week, pushing my jogger and occasionally waving as she cruised by in her car, or honking as I rolled by her adorable white farmhouse on Santa Rita Road.
Erin returned to SLO county and was ready to mingle, and she is one to make things happen. She got us off our complacent butts and we committed to a coffee date. I was more than a little nervous. I was the only married one, and also had a just-turned-one year old daughter. Some people truly don't know what to talk about unless they are in the exact same life stage, and I was ready to let the other two talk about their fabulous young, "single" lives without boring them with my mommy stories. An even worse theory went through my brain as well: What if we have nothing to say to each other? Thank God for Kealani, the one-year-old circus act... if nothing else we could just watch her be herself, which can entertain even the most anti-kid Scrooges for hours.
On St. Patrick's Day in 2010, the three of us, plus Kealani, met up at Amsterdam Coffee in Paso Robles (now one of my all time favorite places to relax and chat with friends). The hesitation that we (but maybe just I) had felt almost instantly melted away as we began to catch up on each others' lives. Boy, had we missed a lot. The fear of living too different a life from the other two faded as conversations that included three unique perspectives commenced, and our time together passed as quickly as a midnight train. When Kealani's dinner and bedtime crept up and we had to part ways, we dragged our feet, not wanting the reuniting to end. The three of us decided that we needed to make meetings a regular affair. Especially since our ten year high school reunion was quickly approaching (the subject of which may or may not have been 50% of our conversation that particular night) and we needed moral support from each other in order to even consider attending.
What began as a leap into the unknown - meeting old friends I'd known well at one time, being unsure that there would be any common thread holding us together anymore - resulted in the cultivation of two of the best friendships I could have ever imagined obtaining. The three of us are basically the same people we were in high school, minus the naivete, lack of self confidence, false wisdom, and acne (most of the time). We share a very similar sense of humor, basically the same view on relationships, and we each bring a sense of worldliness and experience to the table, due to travels and heartbreaks chalked up over the last ten years. There are times it feels like those ten years never passed, and that we didn't live completely separate lives for a whole decade. But some of the best dishing sessions include stories from that decade. Stories that we weren't together for, or even around to hear about. I think years will be spent catching up on the rest of those untold stories. In the meantime, we're authoring new stories, in which the moral is this: Some friendships are meant to last forever.
(Days before our class reunion last summer we got together and sat in Jasmine's living room in our pjs, grazing on Trader Joe's snacks and sipping wine while we browsed old yearbooks... Inserted here will be the message I wrote in Jasmine's 2000 yearbook at the end of our Senior Year... Currently that book is in a box somewhere.)
I honestly believe there is such a thing as friend soul-mates. We were fortunate to meet one another as kids, and twice as fortunate to come together as adults. I am so lucky to have you both in my life. <3 Wonderfully written, Heather.
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