Life. There’s an ebb and flow. People come and people go. We all move through our days and years in the best way that we know how. We reflect on our choices and we plan for our futures.
This week I have been thinking about people who have not been present in my recent daily life (ummm…40 years not recent) – people who had prevalent roles in my life at different times. What happens? Why do we drift apart? That’s a rhetorical question because there are a million “could be” answers.
For 30 years, we have lived one hour away from my aunt and cousins. I think that we have gotten together three or four times (weddings don’t count because they’re too busy for visiting) – my grandmother’s 90th birthday, my aunt’s 90th birthday, a dinner at our “new” house in the early ’90s and dinner at my cousin’s house this last July. We’ve all been busy for 30 years – kids, school, sports, work, travels, house projects….etc. Life. Ebb and flow.
A couple months ago I reconnected with my cousin, Randy over a situation we were working on for our respective moms. He mentioned that he and his brothers try to have a family dinner every couple months. I mentioned I’d love to join them and lo and behold (a phrase that makes me fondly think of my aunt as I remember hearing it for the first time from her when I was 10 years old), a couple weeks later he invited us to dinner! What a time we had! We shared stories and memories, we asked questions, we laughed and I don’t think anyone cried! My aunt talked about going out with sailors when she was a teenager and seeing Benny Goodman and the likes. It was wonderful to hear her reminisce. It was a wonderful evening.
As Glen and I shared our upcoming plans for Brooklyn, we discovered that both of Randy’s daughters live in Manhattan and he and Alison would be traveling there this fall. We look forward to seeing them in October. (We met their “girls”in August because we brought some household items to them that we had trekked across the country and needed to deliver them.) We also learned that Fremont and Stephanie would be in NYC in September. So guess what? We spent most of the day with Free and Stephanie yesterday.
Here’s the thing, in 1978, my cousins Fremont and Dan and his then girlfriend, now wife, Mary-Lynne spent 5 months in a tiny little car traveling throughout western Europe for FIVE months. You can imagine how close we became under those circumstances. We came home promising to stick together and then…Life. The the ebb and the flow.
I guess all of this to say…I loved hanging out with Fremont yesterday. Being with him brought back such a flood of memories! (Glen had to listen to them all day long.) It was great to get to know Stephanie and hear about their “kids”. And now I can’t wait to see Randy and Alison in a few weeks.
So ebb and flow. Sure. But reconnecting WHENEVER AND WHEREVER you can do it…so worth it! And how lucky am I to be here in Brooklyn making connections with my California cousins?!
PS The other person on my mind was my college roommate. A mutual friend asked me about her and so now…guess who I’m going to be looking up?
Can We? Will We? 