Time in between was just a dream

I was resistant to join Facebook. It had been somewhat mainstream for about a year before I finally agreed to set up an account. I thought it would be annoying. I didn't see the point to it. One of my co-workers had asked me to join, and I asked her "what is so great about FB?" She said, "Nothing, it's just a really lazy way to stay in touch with people. I figured you'd be all over it." When I thought about her comment later, I was not offended. I do have a lot of networks and it is very time-consuming to reach out to all those individuals. In other words, I AM lazy. But I did not join FB yet.

Much later, a friend of mine had posted a photo album and she said we had to have FB in order to see it (which I found out later, is not true). And at that point enough people were bugging me about it that I thought that maybe this FB thing was really the future, and I didn't want to be left behind.

I was not at all prepared for the instant high school reunion that it became, starting the 2nd day I had joined. At first this was very weird for me, especially because I have spent so much time putting the past behind me. I had tried to reunite several times with former high school friend and always ended up disappointed. The person always ended up flaky, or a drug addict, or crazy, and at some point I had decided enough disappointment - I will no longer seek these people out.

So at first I felt a bit awkward about seeing my high school classmates' updates and photos. There have been some reconnections that have remained awkward. But now that I have been on for over a year, I can say that at least a couple of these cyber-reunions have been significant, not awkward, beautiful, our souls remained connected all these years without words, and the love is there as if no time had passed at all. It was at these thrilling moments when I said yes, it's getting better all the time.

I am grateful that my daughter will have this kind of technology available to her. FB is new; I can think of a few tearful goodbyes that I had with people even in the last 5-10 years, when email was available. A friend from undergrad, a friend from grad school, a friend from work. Each time there was a goodbye where we realized we would never see each other again, and said so out loud. We exchanged email addresses, but both of us knew we would never write. Out of laziness, maybe, but more because that just wasn't the kind of connection we had. Our camaraderie was based on a shared goal, a shared project, shared time together, but it was always going to be short-lived. Even though we had not had time to become friends outside of the project, it didn't mean that I didn't want to see them and know how their lives were progressing. At those times, I could have used a "lazy" outlet, a magic window into their lives. I am glad that my daughter does not necessarily have to know that kind of grief.