Facebook, Friendship, and Face Time

The wonderful thing about Facebook for us baby-boomers, is the ability to reconnect with old friends from our childhood and younger years.  My heart is warmed when I can reconnect with someone I used to see, hug, share with on a daily basis, but whom I may not have seen or heard from in 20, 30 even 40 years.  But there is a downside to this wonderfulness.

When we don't connect on a physical level, something is missing.  Nuances, verbal asides, even idle gossip, can inform our friends of events we might not otherwise broadcast in a post.  For example, you might not post "I haven't been feeling well",  but if I see you every day, i might notice that you are looking pale, or have the sniffles, or not eating. 

I have enough Facebook friends, that, if we don't interact on a regular basis, I might not even see a post from you.  If I am your friend, but not a friend to your grown children whom I have never met, I might not see interactions that indicate that something's up.  

I am musing about these things because In the last six weeks two of my much loved Facebook friends, with whom I was actual friends with during my teenaged years and early twenties, have died.  Another dear one went in for surgery and asked for prayers.  I didn't even know my two departed friends weren't feeling well, much less suffering from a terminal disease.  I was terrified to hear of a hospital visit, but, thankfully, in that last case, I was able to private message a relative and find out that the hospital visit was for a benign issue.  Needless to say, I was shocked and saddened when I found out about each event so suddenly.

I don't know how to name my feelings about these events.  It makes me yearn to travel, that's for sure, and personally visit each and every one of you whom I loved long ago, in person.  

When I was a young woman I was pretty footloose and fancy free:  moving around, traveling from house to house, city to city and state to state, before settling down thirty years ago, far from my California and Colorado friends.  

This is to tell each of you that I love you.  

I Love You. Over the years of space and time and change, I love you.  I have always loved you.   

I was so happy to find you, and I am filled with gratitude that I can see your "Likes" and "comments" and photos.  I want to hold you all close to me in any way possible.  So if you aren't feeling well, or are going through a divorce, or having minor surgery, I want to know. Really.   I want to know you.  When you are sad, or ill, or lonely, I want to know so  that I can send my love to you, and hold you and your loved ones close, in my heart, if not in my arms.  

Perspective

I started to title this post, "what I like about growing old". But when I thought about it, I realized its all about perspective.

In 2007, I walked away from a job that paid well, and that I sort of liked. Office politics, my own stubbornness, and other factors all came together and I thought, "no problem, I can get another job quickly..." A recession, my age, and a series of interviews where I was told I was overqualified, proved me wrong, wrong, wrong.

I spent the three next years painting old furniture (and some new), and selling some of it at my Etsy shop.

It was fun, but I stressed about the lack of health insurance in my late fifties, so I kept up the job search. On a whim, and not without a small sense of desperation, I applied at the Big Box Super Store, and within an hour, they called, and within a day, I was again gainfully (sort of) employed.

After six months, I qualified for the group health insurance plan, and started breathing again. I also started enjoying retail work. It's fun; it's easy, and the folks I work with are mostly a joy.

Ninety percent of my co-workers are in their twenties. Young, fresh faced, smart...so smart! Many are students, some still in high school, most in college... even the "executives", college graduates who are earning their first real paychecks, learning the ropes, and having the time of their lives.

But when you're nineteen and twenty there is Drama. There is a lot of Drama.

One of my sweet girl colleagues calls it being all about the "boyfraaaaaaand", with a wry grin and a certain youthful wisdom.

I can remember this. In fact as I chat with my young friends, whether she is the wise girl above, or the young mother dealing with her small children, I am aware of the great blessing of growing old. Because I remember this.

It is a blessing that they share with me their joys and sorrows. It is a blessing that I can share with them, if they ask, what I have learned from the vantage point of my years.

I have the perspective gained from my own joys and sorrows. I'm so very grateful for all of it.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Omaha,United States

Suanne and Lord Byron

My friend, with whom I shared so many girlhood conversations, has died, at the too young age of 59.

We met when we were twelve. Her family had just moved to my neighborhood, and she lived between my house and the all-girls school where she and I were among the "new girls" that year. We became the walking to school friends that I wrote about in my last post. I would stop by her house sometimes after school for awhile before heading home.
Here we are in our school uniforms:




I met her mother and the toddler brother of whom she was so proud. I remember a day when she showed me a tuft of fur she had saved from her dog "Rex", who had died not too long before. Even at that tender age, an age when we are often too wrapped up in out own little worlds to notice to much about others', I could tell how much love she carried in her heart.

We discovered we both had a love for art and music. It was in the world of music and singing that we really came together. I envied her her high clear soprano, I was a lowly alto, but even so, we often competed for the same solos in the various choruses in which we sang. She usually got the Soprano solo, and I would sing the lower harmony.

Our class graduated in 1970. I don't know how it came to be, but around our junior year, we began calling ourselves the "Babes of 1970", and that name has stuck for the last forty-two years.




After graduation, we went our separate ways. We had children, married, divorced, remarried. But we always were "the Babes." I have seen Suanne every ten years at class reunions, but, with the help of the new technologies that keep us all connected, email, and social networking, have been able to enjoy her friendship, and that of most of us "Babes" on a daily basis.

Yesterday I scrolled back through three years of "conversations" with Suanne on Facebook. I saw her comments to others, including other "Babes". All were filled with love. Love for her friends, her husband, her children, of whom she was so proud, and her lovely grandchildren.

It was through this medium that I learned she had written and illustrated a children's book*, and I am proud to be the owner of an autographed copy.

I also learned things about her life I had not known when we were growing up, after I encouraged her to write a "25 things about me" note, which she graciously shared with her friends and family. One of her children asked her to illustrate it on paper, because, "face book will not last forever". I hope she did that.

I have written again and again of the endurance and importance of childhood friendships. When we are children we do not know what we will become, nor how much we love each other. But the experiences we share as children are what bind us. When I met Suanne for the first time after thirty years in 2000, I knew her mostly by the sound of her laughter. Like water flowing over pebbles in a stream. The sweet soprano of her voice so much the same as it had been when we sang together at seventeen.

She seemed to find her joy as an adult. It was in her art, music, and especially her family. As I reread all those posts on Facebook, that joy was always at the surface. She had married her true love, and was living a life surrounded by beauty. Even as she wrote of the trials of her final illness, she was optimistic.

Last Friday after treatment, she wrote one day, one of the techs asked, "do you meditate during treatment?"
Surprised by her query due to my daily struggle for calm, I replied, "no. I sing".

Lord Byron could have been describing Suanne when he wrote this poem, so I'll let him describe my friend.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.




* http://www.kopaldart.com/SKK_Illustrations.html
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Omaha

Walking to School Friends

From the time I was twelve years old until eighteen, I attended a school that had the motto, Non scholae sed Vitae Discimus. (We learn not for school, but for life).

I attended with a small group of young women, about sixty of us, who as we attended school together formed bonds we didn't even realize we were forming. As I have written before, some friendships are stronger than time and space. These are the bonds that were formed in part because some of us walked to school together.

When you walk to school with a girlfriend you talk and talk... And talk. About everything. You visit each other's homes. You meet each other's families.

I had two very special Walking to School Friends. We sang together in the school Chorus, and in the more elite "Ensemble" during our Senior year. We acted in plays together, and sometime we competed for the same solos.

These days we'll go for months without a connection. Far flung, many of us see each other face to face only at ten-year reunions when it is as if we saw each other yesterday. In between the planned meetings, sometimes something happens. An Illness. A parent who died too young. Divorce. Widowhood. A child is hurt, or worse. A natural disaster occurs and one becomes homeless for a time.

When these somethings occur, one of us may make a phone call, or write a letter. Then we women get to work on the business of love and support. We know the value of a handwritten note, a bunch of flowers, or a phone call. There is a sisterhood amongst people who virtually and literally grew up together. And where there are sisters, there is usually love. And sister love is powerful.

One of my Walking-to-School Friends is facing what may be her final illness. This is a woman who is surrounded by love even without her sisters. She has a loving husband, wonderful daughters, delightful grandchildren, a multitude of friends, a cherished pet. But recently a letter was written; an email was sent.

Her husband tells me that they already receive daily notes and flowers from loved ones. Neighbors bring food. Even a gift of labor, for the unfinished tree-house that he promised their grandchildren, a project that was postponed due to the interminable doctors' visits and a focus on something else. But when the women who were once school-mates learned of their sister's illness, something exploded.

I am again reminded of the simple power of love. As I read back over drafts of posts I've written here over the last couple of years it's a recurring theme. I guess I can't say it, or learn it enough. When my Walking-to-School friend wrote to me yesterday she said, "Thank you for your loving kindness all the years of our life." Singular.

So I take a breath. I remember my childhood. I feel the loving kindness.

Location:Omaha, NE

The Horrible Disease

A thousand miles from here, a childhood friend is burying her son.  He died of that often fatal illness, schizophrenia. Another childhood friend, when telling of it described it as "this horrible disease that told him he had no disease."

My heart breaks for my old friend, who had watched her child try to cope with his mental illness for years.  In various communications about memorial services, times, places and such, it became clear that there are others among those of us who spent time together as children, who have watched helplessly, as our own children fight the unseen specter of the many faces of mental illness.

When I was a child, growing up in the 1950s and 60s, we didn't talk about such things. And frankly, not much was known about some of the various disorders we now have names for: ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, Aspergers, even depression.

I graduated school with about 50 women, some of whom I had known since preschool.  We all grew up in the same city, and most of us have attended at least one reunion.  When we were in our 20s and 30s, we went on crash diets, bought new outfits, plastered smiles on our faces and went to our reunions firm in the knowledge that no one knew of our deepest secrets, the impending divorces,  financial troubles,  problem children.  But we came together because we love each other.   By the time we attended our last reunion we had been through enough together that most of us no longer worried about "looking good".

For example, when Katrina hit, friends from all over the country rallied to help our New Orleans classmate get her hands on some money until she could go back to her job.  That one event opened me up to the fact that in many ways, our childhood friends remain our closest friends, even across vast distances of time and space.

In 2010, when I returned to the city of my birth for a reunion, I met with a childhood friend who has Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism.  She told me how when we were small, her parents didn't know what to do with her.  How she herself didn't understand what was "wrong" with her, and turned to alcohol at a young age in an attempt to cope. She told me how, as a recovering alcoholic, she now understands a little more about herself.  We spent an enjoyable hour together, I was able to make amends for the thoughtless cruelty I, among others, treated her with when we were children, and she was able to say, she hadn't really noticed but forgave me anyway.  She also told me how hard she works to make eye contact with everyone she meets, and I was able to tell her I thought she did just fine.   I left our meeting feeling refreshed and renewed.

With the death of one friend's child, others of us rally around her.  Those of us who have children with mental illness now openly discuss and support each other.  Mental illness is an incurable disease.  It is sometimes invisible.  It is insidious, treacherous, and crafty.  It tells some of its sufferers that they have no disease. It requires constant vigilance, but most cases it is treatable.  It is also exhausting.   Its sufferers must cope with it day by day, breath by breath.  My own loved one suffered for most of his life before finally, after several suicide attempts, he now has a tenuous hold on understanding himself, sees his doctor regularly, takes his meds, and seems to have let go of misplaced shame.

Day by day.

Breath by breath.

Those of us who have loved ones who suffer from mental illness need to hold fast to one another, we need to understand that it's not our fault, and we need to give each other hugs.  Lots of big, bone-crushing hugs.

Suspicious Densities and my friend Jane

Jane

Sally

I first met Jane in 1993, when she and her husband moved to Omaha. We couldn't have more different backgrounds, but we are very similar, too. She is from New York City, and comfortable with all the sophistication that implies. I am a midwestern girl, a former California hippie, and more comfortable with beer than wine.

Jane comes from a large Sicilian American emotionally expansive and expressive family of people, probably Democrats. I come from a large family too, German Anglo Saxons who while loving, are, well, quieter about it, and Republicans.

We are both decidedly right-brained, mildly dyslexic, stubborn Tauruses...both married to Gemini men. We are both writers, cooks (although she really can cook), and artists. We like to talk (and talk, and talk; her husband calls it "flappin' "). We are both tenacious, focused, and rabidly feminist... We met at a chapter meeting of the local N.O.W. chapter.

Shortly before I met Jane, her best friend, Jeanette, died, after a difficult struggle with cancer. The person Jane is has been shaped by the death of her friend. I got to know Jeanette through listening to Jane's stories. I learned to love her too. She was a May baby, like Jane and me, passionate and tenacious. While Jane mourned the loss of her friend, I mourned never having known this remarkable woman.

Jane and her husband moved away from Omaha and now live in the Washington D.C. area. While we don't talk (and talk, and talk) like we used to, we have never lost touch, and I still consider her a "best" friend.

A few years ago, she sent me a copy of a short story she wrote about her own cancer scare, called Suspicious Densities. She has since turned it into a screenplay for a short film.

This film needs to be made, and Jane needs our help to do it.  I'll let her tell you about it herself.



I am almost 60 years old, and the longer I live, the more I am touched by cancer. A step daughter who we almost lost to Leukemia, is 20 years cancer free and now has two beautiful children of her own. A friend who is going to take off a few weeks from work, after a mammogram detected the tiniest of a stage one cancer. A sister who had a lumpectomy and a few treatments and is now fine, fine, fine.

But when I was very small, before mammograms, my mother found a lump. It could have been a death sentence, or a cyst. Only major surgery determined it was a cyst. But she didn't know until she woke up from surgery.

My messages today: face life with joy, get a mammogram, a prostate exam, whatever, and help my very talented friend Jane tell her story. You won't regret it!