Old friends made new again

I'm not posting on my public blog tonight. That will have to wait until tomorrow. Instead I'm writing here. I had a wonderful day today. I met up with a friend of mine from when I was nine and ten years old. She was less than a year younger than me and lived diagonally across the street. I knew the family who lived in the house she lived in before her family moved in. I had just lost one set of playmates and I went across the street on that summer day and knocked on the screen door. I remember being a little bit nervous because I didn't know them, but I did it anyway. In those days, many houses had spring-loaded, self-closing, screen doors with glass windows that we slid up to leave the bare screen. Inside, the front door was left open, almost all the time, so that the wind could blow through the house and alleviate some of the oppressive heat. That meant that when you went to the door, you could see inside the house before the person got to the door to answer it. I said who I was and asked if there were children in the house. Well, Diana and her two younger sisters were there and I met them. Diana and I became pals. We had the rest of the summer together and then went to the same school. She got the teacher I had had and loved the year before and we used to stay after school and clean her blackboards for her, walking home together in the gathering winter dusk afterwards. I can remember the teacher's name to this day: Mrs. Finlayson. She must have been close to retirement at that time, or it seemed that way to us. She had at least one son who was an adult and we thought that was OLD. Diana and I explored Anne of Green Gables together and pronounced ourselves 'bosom buddies', just like Anne and her best friend Diana. We walked to school and home with our arms linked and heads together. We talked a lot. Diana learned the sign language alphabet and taught me and her younger sister how to use it to spell as well. She went to an unorthodox, non-denominational Sunday School and took me along on one occasion. I still remember it. Then she taught us some of what she learned there. I don't remember all of the things we did together in the short year and a half that we knew one another, but I had a sense of having met a fellow traveler, a kindred spirit. She didn't have to believe all the same things I did, or see things in exactly the same way. It was enough for me that she was smart and quick. Her thoughts flew like lightening and I liked that. Diana moved west just a month before my family moved to another community. We corresponded for a few years and then something happened and we didn't any more. Neither of us know why or when it happened. Last winter I 'Googled' her, on the off-chance that I might be able to discover where she was and what she was doing. Lo and behold, there she was, in Edmonton, Alberta, a lawyer working on justice reform! I downloaded her picture from the University of Alberta website where I found it, knowing for usre that it was her because she looked just as I remembered, and thought about what I would say. Then I sent her an email and waited to see what would happen. I woke the next morning and there was her response - and she was just as happy to have found me as I was to have found her. We exchanged a few emails and then I suggested a phone call. It stretched to two hours. It felt as though the years had melted away. Maybe the phone provides a kind of intimacy because you don't see the years; you just hear the familiar voice. Now it's a woman's voice, but the cadence and inflections are the same. Today I had the opportunity to meet her, face to face. It was every bit as special as I had thought it would be. Of course, there wasn't enough time. There wouldn't be, with thirty-eight years to catch up on, but I know that we will have more opportunities to talk, in person and on the phone. We talked about what we remember of one another, and that we have never forgotten one another, and that there has been a space that the other person used to be in. By now, she's back in Edmonton and tucked up in bed. I feel good. I feel satisfied. Today was a good day. I read Janet's blog today and she wrote about her childhood friend in Nova Scotia and included a photo of her with her daughters. Janet's friend is a wonderful cook and a good friend to her. I remember hearing about her all those years ago when we met at Ryerson. Then my mother called me tonight and was telling me that her childhood friend as just had a pacemaker installed. She was about to call her in England and see how she's doing. My friend Julie is coming to see me on Tuesday, the night before she goes on holiday - short but sweet. I'm waiting for Ruth to get back to Scotland from Manchester so that we can have a chat. Nori checked in this evening to chat. I'll see Spencer tomorrow for coffee. I'm feeling grateful today for the wonder, richness and surprises of friendship. My life would be so much less without them. They're all different and give me different things, even allow me to be different parts of who I am. They are colourful and rich threads in the fabric of my life.