In 1993 when I first got out of Journalism school, I got my first journalism job at The Royal City Record in New Westminster. The woman who hired me is above on the left. Pat is the editor of the community newspapers in New Westminster and Burnaby. I worked for her on call for the Spring/Summer of 1993.
It just so happens that Pat lives with her partner on a floating home and at the time I was just getting involved with Mac who also lived on a floating home. The floating home communities where they lived are small and people know each other.
In fact, Pat's partner Janna, used to walk their dog and go for a walk with Mac with his dog on the dyke almost every day for a few years. The last time I saw Pat and Janna was November 1998. I remember it dinstinctly because I was standing in Mac's dilapidated living area on his float home. I was having an almost hysterical meltdown, crying, barely able to spit out the words, "Look at this place, no wonder he killed himself." Janna was trying to comfort me and Pat said something like, "It's not that bad." We could all laugh at that now." At the time it was heartbrakingly painful to me and that memory is still one of the most vivid, still able to evoke a tinge of sorrow in my heartcentre as I think of it.
When Mac died, Pat and Janna adopted Mac's dog Molly whom he had adopted from the SPCA a few years earlier. Molly was this really gentle, beautiful, medium-sized, calico-coloured fluffy dog with the saddest brown eyes. Apparently, I found out today while being treated to breakfast by them, that Molly had a wonderful life with them living to a ripe old age and enjoying life on their many camping trips and walks by the river.
Pat saw me on Facebook because she is connected to someone else I know, a reporter, who works for The Vancouver Sun, also on my Facebook page. On Friday morning, I saw Pat's post that she was worried about the ferry's capability of dealing with Friday's winds and she couldn't wait to get to Salt Spring. When I read that I extended the invitiation to meet up with them for a coffee if they felt so inclined since they were going to be on island!
We met this morning for breakfast at The Treehouse and I really enjoyed catching up. It was a true gabfest. Turns out the friend they are visiting lives less than a minute up the road from where I now live. They also own a cottage on the ocean in Newfoundland where they spend about 7 weeks in the summer. They bought that in 3 days on a cross-Canada trip a few years back where they pulled (Desi and Lucy Arnaz-style, a fifth wheel trailer). Check out the movie from 1954 The Long, Long Trailer, if you don't know what I'm talking about.
The other person that Facebook enabled the connection to was Byron, whom I'd met just once when he bought one of my photos at The Saturday Market. He came back to Salt Spring over Christmas for another week-long silent retreat and we had lunch on New Year's Day. It's not like we keep in touch directly on an ongoing basis but it's nice to know that when he comes to Salt Spring he can always contact me and if we feel like it we can get together and enjoy each other's company.
Facebook really may transform virtual relationships into face-to-face interactions and that, for the most part, is the ultimate connection dontcha think?
What's your best Facebook re-connection/connection story? Leave a comment!