Touchstones to Your Past

What I count one of my greatest blessings right now is that I am in touch with some of the people whose acquaintances with me reach far back into my life.

I have no problem meeting new people.  I meet new people practically every day at my job.  And I truly like most of them.  I've learned to "go with the flow" as supervisors and team members are changed.  There's frequently a new someone in our lives, you know--neighbor, teacher, bishop, friend.  I like to think of these exchanges in a simple way--you drop one hand in your circle in order to take another.

But there is something viscerally comforting about being in the presence or cyber-presence of someone whose history with you stretches way back to the beginning.  There's a kind of witnessing of who you are as a person that you can't get anywhere else.

It's almost like having your parents back.

They're a part of your personal history, touchstones to your past.  They likely formed part of your own character.

In most cases, as you catch up with someone from way back, you aren't really surprised by what they tell you about their life.  You just know them, and they just know you, no matter how many years fall in between.  You don't have to explain yourself.  You don't have to fill in so many blanks, or wonder what they will really think of you. 

Some of the first people I met in this life are gone--mainly, my parents and two oldest siblings, most aunts, and all uncles.  Many of the people I relied on from the beginning to answer my questions, tell me the truth, give information, and reflect myself back at me are just not there anymore.  Meeting up with someone who can do that is priceless.

A few years ago, I searched the Internet for classmates from my graduating class to let them know a reunion was being planned.  One friend reached back to reminisce with me about my having asked him to a dance many years ago.  It had not gone perfectly.  Now both adults with long-range perspective, we could talk about that from each of our points of view, and his story filled in gaps in mine that would never otherwise have been filled.  Some of my friends came to the reunion and some didn't, but my Internet search put me back in touch with at least twelve of my favorite high school friends.  At the reunion, it was fun to find myself sitting down to dinner with my high school best friend as if all of those years had not passed.

Marvelous things have occurred since this.  One friend who didn't want to go to the reunion invited me to have lunch with her. We had a private reunion and are still in touch.  Another friend came over to hang out one night as if we were still girls.

I had caught the bug.  I reconnected with one of my best friends from my earliest childhood just in time to be there for her when her father died.  I looked up a friend from early in my first marriage (thank goodness she had included her maiden name, because our last names had both changed) and we had a couple of very sweet catching-up sessions. 

Recently, an old college roommate's husband invited me to come up for her significant birthday.  I met or remet some of her family members and showed off my memory of her siblings' names.  No decades seemed to interrupt our friendship.

Also recently, one of my brother's childhood friends called me his friend, which warmed my heart.

Cousins can fill that precious need, and I have several whose time in their presence I really cherish.  It's been fun to also meet my husband's cousins and friends from way back when, who can put him in a new context for me.  It's a comfort to me, also, that my husband has been in my life long enough that he knew my parents, now long gone. That helps put me in context for him.

New people, welcome to my life!  Long-familiar ones still in my life, thank you from the bottom of my heart..