The Bittersweetness of Childhood Reconnections

I love reading The New Yorker.

The Sept. 20th issue has a feature on Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who co-created Facebook. When I read the article I felt that the writer was really having to work hard to get Mr. Zuckerberg to give him something of real interest. The article said that Zuckerberg was a private person who didn't speak to The Press and who wasn't thrilled about the increasing number of public engagements required of him.

Can you imagine being him? He'd have to change the privacy settings just to accommodate his own need for privacy. His facebook quote says that he's "trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share." And, that's why I'm even talking about this.

Come to think of it, I wasn't actually on Facebook (but LinkedIn) when I made a reconnect with a girl I knew from childhood, elementary school, birthday parties. You know, that part of our other lives that we all have but in adulthood, we can't really believe, so many years later, that we ever truly had.

If you're of a certain age, it's the one where you and I got dressed up for birthday parties, where we actually played a game called Pin the Tale on the Donkey and where my mother, (as so many mothers of that era) would wrap pennies (or was it dimes?) in Saran Wrap and put them inside the cake. I don't really recall ever getting money (or choking on money) but my memory of  my childhood has always been a bit hit and miss.

We'd play musical chairs with all manner of chairs collected from throughout the house and just as the anticipation interspersed with hesitation reached a peak, dear old mom would lift up the needle from the record player and the lap scramble would begin.

My brother and other boys would have greasy, Brylcreamed hair. I had a pink, organza party dress that was too short and I'd wear white ankle socks with pointy black patent shoes. We each had a cake because our mother, bless her, would make my brother and I each a separate cake. And, we'd sit at each end of the table, King and Queen, over our small but very special birthday party domain.

There was Phyllis and Michael and Darryl, Diane, Jo-Anne and Gary, Leo, Richard and Robin and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone.

I can recall this person, that I just connected with, as a child. I remember, vaguely, her mother, the fact that she didn't have a father around and she lived in an apartment. Her mother smoked and I liked her mother. I remember this friend's thin felt or black velvet ribbon that she often wore in her hair  and the way her thick, coarse brown hair curved around her face. I remember her smile and her teeth and her sweetness and I think she even had a dimple.

I feel the need to emphasize that unlike the pseudo preciousness of celebrity that has been touted as the "norm," none of the people I grew up with are famous, and, I have to remind myself as you should do occasionally just to to check in with reality that, NOT being famous IS actually the norm. It's easy to forget that nowadays.
Whenever I hear about people from my childhood, or my past, and undoubtedly if/when they hear about me, none of our lives have turned out to be what might have been anticipated for us when we were children. I find that so very bittersweet - for them, for their parents and for the type of hopes that may have had for our futures. Maybe it's just my very working-class background that has made that so. Maybe it's just the norm.

Perhaps that is why I've always found connecting to the past more sad than satisfying once the momentary curiosity that comes from being "updated" on the person's circumstances has passed. In a short life, it's always seemed good, to me,  to leave the past back there where it was being lived  instead of brought forward although I have had at least one or two really enjoyable times reconnecting for short periods.

Any thoughts about re-connecting with people from your past?  Sweet nostalgia? Waste of time? Major annoyance? Path to forgiveness? Reminder that you can never really go back.

Facebook Reconnections a Friendly Bonus

I am beginning to see the value of Facebook. Within the last 2 weeks I have had really enjoyable times with 3 people who, if not for Facebook, I wouldn't have connected with. Afterall, Facebook enables connectivity between people even when face-to-face connections are really tenuous.

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!