walked across that burning bridge

How do people manage to stay in touch with friends over long courses of time? Someone please explain this to me. I barely manage to keep in touch with my current friends. It really seems as though I am missing some key socialization gene that keeps me attached to people. They just fall away. It is not because I do not care about them. It is not because I do not think highly of them. It is not because I do not miss them when they are gone. It is just the effect of time and place. Or maybe it is the incongruence of reconciling who you once were with you are now.

This is all on my mind because I am meeting the only person I have kept in touch with from my hometown tonight. She and I used to live five blocks apart. We went to the same elementary school, junior high, high school. I can still remember, vividly, painfully, the first Thanksgiving after we had all gone off to college. A bunch of us all gathered at JG's house. She was somehow in touch with everyone. We sat around exchanging stories. Did this happen to you too? Do you think classes are hard? Is living in a city hard? Is he cute? All these stupid questions that naive freshmen cannot ask their fellow classmates, but can ask their former high school friends, for some reason.

Maybe most people come home on break from college and immediately meet up with all their friends. That was rarely a possibility for me. My mom's two brothers and two sisters all lived in my hometown. My grandparents lived in my hometown. My eight cousins, all under 10 years old at the time, all lived there. When I came home, even before I had put my bags in my bedroom, some little twerp would be waiting.

Not that I am complaining. In college, you spend day in and out around other people your age. There is something about coming home to an excited hug around your knees, something about having your cheek pinched by an aunt, or even about getting yelled at by your chauvinistic but lovable grandfather about gaining weight that lets you exhale, makes you feel like you are part of something permanent. I would love to wring my hands, cry woe is me that my parents bullied me into not seeing my friends from high school, but the fact is, I have always been of my own mind. Had I really preferred to hang out with friends from high school, I would have.

Also, there is a pesky detail I left out: I loathed high school.

JG and I actually lost touch over the years too. There was a span of time during which I knew no one from high school. She and I wound up reconnecting in Manhattan six years ago, through a coincidental mutual acquaintance. It was one of those bizarre, surreal, small world connections. Now she is visiting, and I wonder how I will seem through her eyes. I wish I could see her vision of me as a kid, and whether it is so vastly different as I think it is.