Facebook Reconnection
Sometime last year or the year before, I decided to look up a girl (ok, no
longer a girl) with whom I had gone on a summer home-stay language course in
Guadalajara, Mexico. We spent 5 weeks
living with a family, attending classes in the mornings, and absorbing the
culture in the afternoons and evenings.
Somehow we survived.
I was 16 and Kitty was 15.
Let me tell you, there was virtually no supervision! There was so much potential for trouble! We found some, but were fortunate enough to
avoid much, much more. Just as an aside, I will say that it was never a 'girlfriend' situation, or even a girl crush. Just friends and roommates.
So, I looked her up and found her living in Anchorage,
Alaska. She has a son in college in
Portland and said that she travels here periodically. We tried to get together one time last year
but the schedules just wouldn’t
cooperate.
This time, though, it worked out.
We met for drinks at a pub near my house yesterday
afternoon. Besides her college attending
son, her daughter has just moved to Portland to complete an internship in
town. So, she has twice as many reasons
to visit the Rose City.
I wasn’t sure what it would be like to reconnect with
someone I hadn’t seen for nearly 40 years.
That’s a lot of water under the bridge!
As it turned out, she is a wonderful person and instead of having a
quick, awkward drink and scooting out of there, we stayed and chatted for about
three hours. Three hours! We reminisced about our adventures, about the other kids in the program, we had a lot of laughs and reminded each other of stories the other had forgotten.
I also got to meet her daughter towards the
end of our get together. A lovely young
woman, a do-gooder like her mom; smart, sweet, and genuine. I suggested that she take a self defense
class at my school, and I think she will.
She is smart, but she has grown up in Alaska and Portland is a lot more
like a city than Anchorage.
That’s something good that I can say about Facebook. It sometimes helps people reconnect with
friends from the past. I'm glad we met up!
