Friends come in different sizes, shapes, and personalities. They come in different ways, and they leave for a variety of reasons.
I'm one of those people who doesn't like to lose friends, but to maintain friendships for as long as possible, hopefully, a lifetime. It doesn't always happen that way and you can't always prevent a friend from drifting away. Sometimes it's a disconnection due to a move, or life choices, or because of a misunderstanding (or an outright war.) I don't like wars or ugly disagreements, and fortunately haven't lost many friends to such a situation.
Recently I joined one of those on-line network sites, and have reconnected with another member with whom I became friends 50 years ago. Even though we attended different schools until high school, we spent quite a bit of time together on weekends and after school. We always had such fun, giggling and being silly, like most grade school girls do. When we went to high school, we had different friends and activities, and our paths diverged. She became a cheerleader and had other interests. I was not very outgoing and spent much of my time working as a babysitter.
We both married and had children in the same classes in their schools. Even though we lived in the same town, we ran into each other very infrequently. It was always pleasant to see her, but we made no effort to get together socially. Life took each of us on our own routes, until we found each other again at the age of sixty on a social network website. We've really 'clicked' with the tapping of the keyboard through the site pages and private emails. How ironic this seems to me.
After all those years in the same town with very little connection, we have discovered a strong friendship on the internet.
I am both grateful and delighted to have found her again. She says that ours is a 'golden' friendship. Funny she should use that word, as one motto I adhere to is this, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other, gold." Both are precious.
