I'm back

I've had friends in from DC - two friends I've known for 15 years, almost, and who, until this past week, had never met my son. A wrongness that has finally been remedied, but it will still never feel right that these friends, to whom I was once attached at the hip*, will see my son, their "nephew," only sporadically. The greatest downside to expat life is how hard it is to keep the silken threads of relationship growing across distance and time. I haven't always managed it well...I have seen friendships wither these past five years. But these two - it's still good, still real. But it is different. We miss entire episodes in each other's lives. Things I used to live through with them - relationships beginning and ending, apartments found and lost, the first grey hair, the worst movie we ever wasted eight dollars on - are now stories told across space. It's different. It's not less real, but it is less immediate, less tangible. Less intense. We feel the distance, and we feel the years between visits. The last time I saw RandB was December 2003 - right after the infertility diagnosis when R and I fled to the States. We miss a lot in each other's lives, it's inevitable even with people who do a better job of staying in touch than I do. But we're holding on still. Sometimes the thread is stretched mighty thin, but the advantage of silk is its surprising strength.

* I once said to R "Date me, date my friends." Good thing he liked them, and they, him.