Day 11: Keeping Up

Over the last couple of years, I have spent a lot of time catching up with old friends, former classmates and former co-workers. Two summers ago, my high school classmates gathered for a weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our graduations. Last summer, my grade school classmates and I celebrated our 25th reunion. On the first Friday of every month, I have lunch with Monique, one of my former Purina co-workers. And this week, I will get to see a handful of my other former co-workers.

There is great comfort in surrounding yourself with people who have walked the formative steps of life with you. The only folks who remember sitting beside you on carpet squares in Mrs. Droste's kindergarten class in 1976 or repelling down the wall at Forty Legends in 6th grade are the people who experienced it with you. The only ones who know how nervous you were moments before taking the stage as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music or what it felt like to be the first class to walk through the giant wooden ring (courtesy of Mr. Scotino) are the people who were there. The only ones who endured legal meetings and client meetings and 50 hour work weeks are the people who did it with you.

Greater comfort comes in reuniting or keeping up with those people across a lifetime and discovering that in some ways time stands still. All change is not scary. In fact, often times, life changes bring you close to people you never thought you'd let past your emotional walls or who you had nothing in common with or who you thought you would ever be friends with.

I count myself one of the luckiest people in the world because I have the same best friend today that I had when I was 2 years old. (We survived arguments over my Andy Gibb album & cans of Aqua net.) I frequently have dinner with groups of women with whom I went to high school which always results in hours of side-splitting laughter and a couple of times each year I get to see grade school classmates who were an integral part of the first 14 years of my life. Also, in the last few years, my teammates from college and I have started getting together again. That is certainly a time in my life which nobody else can understand or relate to except them. And I have left every job with at least one life-long friend who has been a part of the important dates in my life since.

Keeping up with all of them is not easy but the reward that comes in making the effort cannot be measured. Making time and making sure that too much time doesn't pass between connections sometimes seems impossible. But keeping up keeps me honest. It keeps me grounded. And it keeps reminding me that there are some amazing people in this world and I am lucky to call them "friend."