Old Friends and New Friends

   An old friend Mary came over for awhile today. Mary, her ex Ric and I have shared a couple of adventures I chronicled here in the last few weeks. I'm thankful to Facebook because we had lost touch over the years as she transferred around the world and I moved a few times myself. Our relationship always seems to pick-up from right where it left off with no awkwardness or silent pauses. Mary, My wife Shari and I are good friends. Lots in common and lots to laugh about. I love her dearly and would do anything for her. Lately though it seems that her visits seem to be when Shari and I are down on our luck. It hasn't always been that way.

   Facebook has also brought other friends back into our lives, people we've missed for 20 some years. That's always a treat to be reunited and find out that the things that attracted you in the first place are still present after all these years. If anything age and a longer perspective has brought a new maturity and deepeness to our relationships. I value these old friends I'm reconnecting with.

   And then there are my new friends. The people I've met on the internet through blogs and through chat rooms and through shared interests. In these relationships primarily via internet. I've been able to connect in deep ways that are still a bit surperficial but valuable just the same. I say superficial because these friendships or as my friend LimesNow calls them 'tend friends are based on what we are willing to reveal about ourselves through our writings and our comments about our writings.

  Of course this happens in off-line relationships as well. Even after 22 years of marriage I will find out something of my wife that will truly surprise me. Sometime making me laugh and other times making me crazy. I find I like the things I don't know about my friends as much as I like the things I do know.

   LimesNow is one of those friends as is her special friend "Once known as the Badger" and Kirk, Standing on My Head, Garlandless Judy, and of the course the cool and sexy Erin O Brien. I wouldn't know any of of them if they came up and shook my hand, but I think we share a deep bond. Perhaps its Karmic. Another friend I knew as 14yr Survivor for weeks before I found out her name. We connected because we share a commonality in Bladder Cancer and we support each other and share diet and health care info and it too is special.

   As I slowly get to know these new friends I find much in common that seems like we were fated to meet even though we live thousands of miles from each other. Old friends and new friends share in the fact that they are friends, not just people I know. I treasure each of them.