A Blast From the Past
I will be the first to admit that I am terrible at keeping in touch with people. I’ve always sort of known this about myself, but it was confirmed recently when my high school class formed a group on Facebook for our 10 year reunion this summer. Of the 100 and something people in that group, I recognized maybe a handful of names. And of that handful of names, I had kept in touch with maybe two of them. And by “kept in touch,” I mean we occasionally chat on Facebook.
It’s not that I didn’t love high school. I actually loved it. I went to one of those picture-perfect beach community high schools where everyone is tan, the trucks in the parking lot are full of surf boards, and the biggest problem we had in school was marywanna. Of course, that’s a pretty broad generalization. But the point is that it was a good school. A great school. And I had a blast, due largely in part to these two ladies:
The one on the far left is my oldest friend, Sarah. We met in 6th grade when she was seated behind me in Social Studies. We’ve been friends ever since and I think of all the friendships I’ve had in my life, Sarah’s has been the most real. We haven’t always been close, but we’ve always been real and honest with each other. More so than any other friendships I’ve ever had. In college, Sarah and I lived together for a year and it just about ruined our friendship. Years later after the patch had been healed and we had happily moved onward and upward with our friendship, I would realize that the fault in that situation had been mine. Sarah was the first friend I’d had who moved on to a different phase in her life before me and so it was the first time I had to learn that being friends with someone whose life mirrors your own is easy. It’s standing by that friendship when you’re experiencing different things that makes a friendship valuable. Sarah’s friendship taught me that and through that lesson, our friendship became stronger over the years.
When I moved to Connecticut, we grew further apart, mostly by proximity. It was hard to share those day-to-day experiences then, but we kept in touch and she continued to be a central, grounding presence in my life. I never would have thought that one day, we’d end up living 15 minutes apart from each other again and teaching across the hall from each other, but my move to Orlando brought that incredible blessing to my life. Sarah and her husband, Scott, live in Orlando and when we moved here they opened their lives up to us. They introduced us to their friends, showed us around town, helped us move, and it was actually Sarah who got me the teaching job I now have. It has been such an unexpected and wonderful blessing to reconnect, regrow, and refresh my friendship with Sarah over the past 10 months.
Caitlin, in the middle, was part of our group of friends in high school, too. Like Chris and I, Caitlin and her boyfriend, Tim, would go on to become married, high school sweethearts. Looking back, if you showed me a picture of the four of us and told me that we’d both end up marrying those boys, I would have died laughing. So would Cait. But, twelve years later, both Caitlin and I are getting ready to celebrate our six year anniversaries with our high school sweetheart husbands and I don’t think either of us would have it any other way. Fate is funny like that, isn’t it?
I think it’s actually our marriages that have kept Caitlin and I such good friends over the years. She married as young as I did during a time when none of our friends were married and that bonded us in a way that nothing else could have. We understood what each other was going through in those first really hard years of marriage. I distinctly remember the first year we were both away from our families at either Christmas or Thanksgiving, I can’t remember which. None of my other friends would have understood how hard it was to learn the fine art of learning to enjoy holiday with your in-laws at such a young age, but Cait called me that day and though we didn’t go into the nitty gritty details because both our in-laws were close by, we comforted each other by knowing that what we were going through was normal and even good. Our marriages look very different. Our lives look very different. But our commitment to our husbands and to our families and to finding time for our own passions and pursuits in the middle of that commitment binds us together.
Caitlin came in town this weekend to visit me and Sarah and her college friend, Elyssa (right), who also happens to live in Orlando. We spent the weekend shopping and eating and watching Eat, Pray, Love, like only girlfriends could do. Bean hung out with us because Chris was working and it was so much fun to see my oldest friends playing with him. Bean kept the man-love real by bringing along his most masculine toys. Though that didn’t stop me from holding pink dresses up to him for size comparisons while we shopped…
But by the time we took some pictures late in the afternoon, Bean was over the girls weekend. I literally had to step on him to keep him from running off.
With any other friends, I would have apologized for my wild, active, headstrong child that day. But not to those girls. When you’ve been through as much as we have for as many years as we have…well…crying babies aren’t the worst we’ve endured together.
*****
Today I am grateful that I know what true friendship means because of Sarah and Caitlin.
15 Comments
Alaina
Aw, friends like that are great and they truly are a blessing and something for which to be grateful!
Elizabeth@The Sweet Life
Really great that you’re treasuring those special friendships as you do–they are few and far between!
Maybelline @ Naturalmente Mam¡
It’s nice to look back and laugh together again… I’ve always believed that friends are the family you choose..
Amy
Aw, lovely post 🙂 It is such a blessing to to find friendships that stand the test of time, that you can look back together and wonder at how much you’ve grown & been through together 🙂
Lindsay (Young Married Mom)
These ladies sound wonderful. It’s very cool to realize you’ve been friends with someone for most of your life–what a blessing! Some of my best friends are named Sara(h) and Kaitlyn, too (different spellings). Reading about your friends with the same names made this extra real to me 🙂
Andrea in NC
Thank you so much for posting this testament to your friendships! I really needed to hear this after the week I’ve had. You are SPOT ON with your comment “being friends with someone whose life mirrors your own is easy. It’s standing by that friendship when you’re experiencing different things that makes a friendship valuable. ”
I’m currently going through this issue with my best friend. She doesn’t know what it’s like to make decisions together with one’s husband….and so she’s struggling with my husband & my decision for him to go back to school when he got laid off. He’s not working, & I’m a teacher, so my paycheck doesn’t stretch very far. She apparently is upset at our financial situation & thinks I’m being taken advantage of (which I’m NOT!).
She has built up a lot of resentment towards him now, and for the past several months she hasn’t answered her phone when I called because she was afraid she’d blow up on me. I’m still struggling with how to deal with this. How can I help her understand the whole “married couples make decisions like this together” concept?? Do you have any suggestions??
Tressa
I’m terrible with keeping up with friends too. I need to work on that part of my life! I loved reading about your “OLD” friends. Ten year reunion, wow. Enjoy it! I hope you recognize more from your class soon 🙂 (I’ve had two ten year reunions plus some extra years thrown in there!! Didn’t go to any of my reunions)
Marie @ It's a Kind of Normal
Aw Katie, that’s a lovely post. I’m also terrible with keeping in touch with people, and now I’m grateful that I’m not the only one! I’ve actually made it a resolution for this year to try and get back in touch with some of those people that I just haven’t seen in a long while, because of the various directions our lives have gone in. So thank you for reminding me of that resolution, I must make attempts to start doing that. One of my other resolutions was to start, and keep going with a blog, so maybe that’s something I could blog about as well 🙂
Meghan
LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing my sister end up in a photo on your blog! So glad y’all had a good time together; I’m looking forward to getting the update from her later today!
Megan (Best of Fates)
This post has inspired me to get in touch with old friends. Only sadly I know I will probably lose the motivation before actually doing so. But it’s the thought that counts, right?
RIGHT??
Rachel
Glad you had a great time. Catching up with old friends is special isn’t it? I only keep in close contact with about 3 of my school friends, but we don’t get to see each other very much as we live at all ends of the country!
Jordy
My favorite kind of friends are the ones who you can meet up with once a year and start from exactly where you left off, no questions asked. I love some good girlfriend-ships!
Casper
That is a wonderful quote about it being easy to be friends when your lives are the same – it is when your lives are different that the real friendships shine through. Glad you got to get together with your girls!
Diana @ A Little Bit of Life
I have literally responded to Facebook requests from people I went to high school with “Do I know you?” So I completely understand the drifting apart. I live 20 minutes from my hometown and rarely reconnect with anyone. I do however envy your girls day – it sounds like a blast!
Kristin
Wow… it doesn’t look like you guys have changed much at all. 🙂