This fall, I reconnected with a couple of friends that I have not spoken to in decades. In both cases, I have not had any contact with them for over thirty years in one case and thirty four years in the other. Yes, this does qualify me for "middle age" status, minimally. Some would just say I was old. To them I say, my eighty-seven year old father and ninety-five year old uncle are assuredly old. Okay, I am old to teenagers and probably, to twenty-somethings. Alas, I'm probably old to my thirty-two year old daughter. Old but not necessarily mature.
But reconnecting with my old friends is a time conundrum of its own. On one hand I would like to say to them that I've lived the heart of my life, the important and significant years. I'll just have to catch you up on all of my important moments in the last few decades and then we'll start over here now, in 2013. I'm still the same person I was at twenty, right?
On the other hand, a significant part of me feels like I am not the same person I was at twenty. That twenty year is within me, but another person has grown around him like a tree. To strain that metaphor a little further, I've grown more than thirty rings of new person around that twenty year old and it might be a little hard to access him now.
How do I explain this to my old friends? After all, we have all moved on, as the cliché says. There were reasons we both moved on. Part of me would say that real life got in the way and some of our friends got pushed aside. And there is some truth to that. Then there are those reasons that they have not connected with me in all that time. Those could be ordinary or those could be a little uncomfortable. But that twenty-year-old person in me is shouting from within, "I really liked that person and want to know them again."
Now the work begins. Now I have to communicate with them and get to know them all over again. Now I will hear the significant moments in their lives over the last few decades. Then we'll see how it goes from there.
