Michelle, Amaya & Luisa at the pool; InterContinental Hotel, Chicago
Because it’s ubiquitous now, I sometimes forget about the really cool, and even life-changing things made possible by social media in general, and Facebook in particular.
A few years ago, my husband arranged a surprise for me: He contacted a few of my high-school friends (whom he’d never met, and with whom I had not been in contact for many years), and signed me up for my high-school 25th reunion. I had wanted to go but previously had declined the invite because of the expense involved. But it was something Patrick knew I’d enjoy and so took matters into his own (virtual) hands by first contacting my old friend Vive Bridges (whom he’d already met) who put him in touch with a few other people on Facebook.
Since that reunion, I’ve been able to keep in touch with a handful of old friends on almost a daily basis because I’m now connected to them on Facebook and a few other social media outlets. And I’m at the stage in my life where that feels so, so good. I’m lucky to have them in my life again. Not only because of the obvious perspective it brings a few decades after high school. But mainly because they’re just super-interesting women that I really enjoy knowing all these years later.
I’ve was privileged to commiserate and brainstorm (online and in-person) with one friend who was laid off from her job last year. Last Christmas, she and I met at Starbucks for some girl-time and talked about careers, kids, what it means to be an adult, knitting and the possibility of her having to move from Little Rock back to Memphis. During her job search and interview process, she stopped in Chicago for an afternoon and I was lucky enough to be able to take 1/2 day off work to go meet her for drinks. She eventually found a much better, much cooler job (I knew she would) in Memphis. All these years later, I like her so much, and I’m so glad to call her a friend.
This week, I received a Facebook message from another long-time friend, one I’ve known since we were about 8 years old. We were on a swim team together as kids, and I used to love going to her house to spend the night. Then she and her family moved to Spain for a few years and we fell out of touch. When they moved back to the U.S. a few year later, she and I attended high school together. Since then, she married and moved to Atlanta, I moved to Chicago, and we were out of touch again for many years. But we re-connected at the aforementioned high-school reunion. I’ve enjoyed getting to know her family/kids through Facebook photos for the past couple of years. But I got to meet them in person this week when she and her husband and kids were in Chicago for an impromptu vacation. It was fun, and kind of surreal, to see her kids and my kids playing in the pool together. It brought back so many memories. And even better, her husband and my husband were there, and we all sat around the pool for a while talking about Holland and traveling and kids and swimming like we’d all known each other all along.
Amaya, Ruairi, Lucas & Liam at the pool; InterContinental Hotel, Chicago
So, thank you Facebook, for making it much, much easier to enrich my own life with old friends, and people I’d never see on a regular basis. I love to see them online, and I love it even more when I see them in person!
