facebook

okay, most of us have a past, some of us have a much longer past than others...mine is pretty long. i recently signed up on facebook, thinking maybe i would run into someone from the past. when you put things in facebook the system somehow figures out by your age or where you're from, or maybe something you say, who you might be friends with. one night i'm checking out the friends list, and lo and behold, there's a name from the very distant past. so i write on her wall 'are you the 'Jane Doe' who lived on Prospect Place in Vista?' that was all i said. so we have been playing phone tag for days and finally tonight she caught me at home.

we met when we were 12. lots of stuff happened to us and between us. we grew apart in high school because dumb stuff happens in high school. we talked about all those people we both knew and where they are now. we talked about our kids and their kids. we talked about ex-husbands, brother and sister-in-laws, parents-in-laws. where we have lived and worked. the conversation could have gone on all night. then she told me a very touching story about my dad.

when she was 11 her older sister died. she didn't tell me how or why, just that after that her mother couldn't live in the same house, or evidently even the same state, so they moved from Pennsylvania to California in an old car pulling a small trailer. her, her mom and dad and little sister. her parents didn't know where they would live or work, they just knew they wanted to be in California. as they rolled into Vista (my home town) one foggy night, they ran out of gas next to my dad's gas station. her dad asked my dad if he knew where they might park their trailer until they found jobs and could afford to move to a trailer park. my dad let them park behind his gas station until they found jobs. she said they were only there a few days, but her dad never forgot that kindness. i teared up. i guess i shouldn't be surprised that she hadn't told me that story before, kids never want to admit to being poor or different. even though we were close for many years and she spent time at our house, she had never mentioned it, and pop probably didn't realize she was the same kid whose family he had befriended that foggy night.

i'm hoping we can get together soon and share more stories. she was a great friend. we've missed each other. strange how we sometimes just let things go. we shouldn't.