Here and Now

It’s so strange the way the universe works. I know this from years of observation and it shouldn’t be a surprise. Twenty nine years I have been on this planet and it still surprises me how the lives of people intertwine and meet again after years. Sometimes it’s not long at all- not having contact with someone for a few months and picking back up as if no time has passed. In other instances it can be years or tens of years.

It makes me wonder, too, how it is that people come to have such an impact on your daily life. You may not consciously think about a person and their effect on your decisions and life, but it’s there. Sometimes you don’t want to admit it, but that person matters. Whether they matter because you are forced to wonder what they would think about a life decision or it matters because that person shaped who you eventually became; we are creatures manipulated by time and relationships both past and present. Those two elements seem to have the ability to help shape the future too, which is almost as strange.

Why is it that our parents seem to tell us that the college friends we make are the ones you end up keeping forever, but that really isn’t the way it works? I used to believe them. I was convinced it was true. What I found out was that the friends I had in high school would possibly be the friends I made in college. It’s not that I don’t have college friends for life- I do. It’s that the friends I had in high school changed with me in college. We became new people and I had to become friends with that new person. We were still the same on some level- how could we not be? I keep looking back at my life and I am forced to see that the group of people who matter most to me are mostly from my days in high school. I know this isn’t the same across the world for everyone, but it is for me. There are people who I can not deny made me who I am. The hands of time continuously plop these people back in my life.

Of course there are people who never left my life. Those are the ones I worked really hard to grow and change along side of. I have a few of those people from high school. I also have friends I made during my college years who are as important as the high school ones. But there is this group of people who I was once close with, but time has taken us apart. Sometimes I let it happen and sometimes not. But just like an episode of “This is Your Life” you turn around and a voice from stage left is telling you to have a happy birthday and it was someone you didn’t expect. So strange is the master plan for your life that you have these little surprises and you never saw it coming.

I got an e-mail on Thursday from Amber, who was my first friend when I moved to Clarkston way back in fourth grade. It was short and to the point: “Just wanted to wish you a happy 29th.” Not only was Amber my first friend, but she was my best friend for a long time. The weird part of life is that crappy things happen and you can’t see past that for so long. One crappy thing gets combined with some others and it’s hard to wade your way out and see past things. Friendship is like that too. My friendship with Amber went through three stages in college: best friend, hated former best friend, new friend. By the time we graduated we had found a way to get past the things we did and said and we forged a newer friendship. The sad truth is that a lot of times, as it was with us, it became one of the friendships where you lose track of the other person for a while. Life happens.

When I saw the e-mail I was thrilled! It was short, but I could e-mail her back and see how life was treating her. Amber had gotten married the summer I moved down to Raleigh and I had to back out of being in the wedding because I was so broke I had no way of getting up to Michigan. I felt guilty for a year! It didn’t help that we really didn’t find time to talk and I didn’t hear from her. I realize now, planning my own wedding, that this part of life catches you and transports you to another dimension. Planning a wedding is time consuming and causes memory loss! You can’t remember who you have and haven’t talked to. Time escapes you in ways you could never predict!

I e-mailed her back last night. It’s always so hard trying to catch up with someone like that- two years of time between you. What do you say? What things are important to tell? How can you minimize your life into an e-mail that doesn’t ramble? You do, though. I did, at least. The best part is getting a little wave back from her. It’s so interesting to find out where someone has ended up. I had heard through the Clarkston Gape Vine that she wasn’t working at our old high school as a teacher, but I couldn’t have dreamed of a better job than the one I read about this morning when I opened her e-mail! All the things she had dreamed of when we were in those last days of high school are coming true for her. And I can say, without hesitation, that I am so happy to hear it. Through all the crap we went through during a falling out and a patching it all together again- the hurt and pain of it all for both of us- you realize that this one person still has this influence over your life. All of the bad things had to happen in order to be where you are standing today. There’s no way around it and no denying it. You may have turned to other people who were just as important, but I think we all have the one friend from childhood who will always influence the rest of your life. You either accept it or move forward or you don’t. Either way, time twists and contorts in order to bring things full circle: a birthday wish, high school dreams of a life that seemed so far off, and a voice from the past who will maybe be a voice in the present.

That life is here. That life is now.