I have had the absolutely delightful opportunity to get to spend time with a young woman with whom I had been friends with in my youth. These glory days of growing up as the foreign born kids of expatriates in a gentle country.
It was such a sigh of relief to be able to speak to someone who can understand how real the fear of being kidnapped was, that understands just how wonderful the earthy smell of the soil we grew up on is, who gets as excited about a manicho as I do... some individualized subtleties mixed in with a certain kinship of a shared environment for our experiences.
It was such a sigh of relief to be able to speak to someone who can understand how real the fear of being kidnapped was, that understands just how wonderful the earthy smell of the soil we grew up on is, who gets as excited about a manicho as I do... some individualized subtleties mixed in with a certain kinship of a shared environment for our experiences.
Experiences which include our parents divorces. Scandalous and painful. Moving to the American Southwest, albeit ending up in neighboring states.
The conversations felt like family; from being held accountable to my sons table manners to laughing at shared experiences of our own expatriation to the land of our parents...
A shared commitment to write short vignettes about our lives in relationship to where we are from and what those years created within us.
Some of those experiences are hard, learning to move past the hurt and anger at our fathers for choices they made that ripped us from our roots and the gentleness of our youth... not to mention how to manage the women they chose. Others are gentle, the love for the mountains, the familiar tastes of things like chochos memories of our youth that are both innocent and intoxicating, recollections from those days and how bewildered we were when broken glass no longer adorned the walls surrounding our homes.. Growing up with strong mothers and the hard sunshine of the Southwest creating thicker skins on us than we could have ever imagined.
How marvelously lucky to be able to share these similar rites of passage, to have walked away from the chaos of an uprooted youth into our futures and now to so marvelously be able to know someone who would understand what that feels like... when the pull of our mountains calls out to us.
And for being given this opportunity alone do I love "The Facebook"
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| Cotopaxi and Rumiñahui as seen from top of volcano Corazón, Gerd Breitenbach 2003, public domain |
And for being given this opportunity alone do I love "The Facebook"
1 comment:
Sounds like a wonderful visit. I too am grateful to facebook for keeping me in contact with people I would have otherwise lost touch with. I've even met a sibling I didn't know I had through the internet! Happy for you for having this moment to reconnect to an old friend.
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