There’s no better time to reach for someone we miss

When Candace’s name flashed on my phone a few Fridays ago, I scrambled to pick it up. I was stunned — I’d just been thinking of her, afraid for her, afraid to lose her.

My friend lives in New York City, where the news as the virus pounded the city was horrific and somehow getting even worse.

We had drifted out of touch. Our lives are more complex than they were in the early 90s when we lived and worked together as young news reporters on the Maine coast. We’d not spoken for at least a year, and not seen each other for even longer. Maybe 10 years. Maybe even more.

I’d checked the New York Times repeatedly each day, wondered and worried about Candace, anxious to know if she was OK. Sick? In the hospital? I’d dialed her numbers in my contacts and reached her husband, but that had been days before. 

I picked up my phone to call again, then put it down, thinking my anxiety would be the last thing her husband needed.

Moments later, her name flashed on the tiny screen. Then her voice triggered my fresh tears of relief. 

Ambulance sirens wail non-stop, she said, and I could hear them in the background.

She and her husband are OK. Buttoned up in their small apartment, and staying sane in part by walking early every morning in a nearby park before it’s crowded. 

Work Hard, Play Hard

In the highlight reel from my 20s, Candace is always there. We worked long hours at that tiny newspaper, in a tight-knit family of young reporters and felt a strong sense of purpose to serve the community — even though we were both transplants. We lived in a rented, cedar-shingled cape house with blue shutters perched on a hill. 

Our landlords were a local, married educators who lived with their five kids in a yellow colonial just down the wooded path from our house — which, of course, was really their house. They had built it themselves with her father. The husband was a moose of a man and science teacher at the local high school. His wife was the guidance counselor. 

Good, solid, generous people. 

Our landlord would tell us how much he loved to watch the weather move across the sky over the river valley behind the house. The view, indeed, was stunning. Nothing but trees stretched to the horizon. A change in shades of green marked the spot where the Kennebec River cut through the trees, but we could not see the water. Only tree tops.

During those years in that house, I caught Candace’s obsession with Halloween and we hosted big, elaborate Halloween parties. Once, for a “Shipwreck at the Bottom of the Sea” theme, we even made a huge octopus from old sheets tie-dyed purple then stuffed for a head and legs. Our landlord climbed up on the roof to anchor the octopus to the chimney so it draped over the front of the house, one of its pale purple tentacles wrapped around a diver suit borrowed from a lobsterman friend and stuffed with straw.

Thirsty Frogs and Long Hugs

At least 10 years have passed since we’ve seen each other. It was May, I think, when Candace and her husband pulled up in their little Honda in front of my petite folk Victorian house in central Pennsylvania. They are actors, and were driving cross-country from a winter in California to summer theater jobs in New England.

Candace emerged from the passenger seat of the jam-packed car with the small glass tank she’d been holding on her lap. “Hellloooooo!” she greeted, and asked if we had any water for her pet frog. These long driving days were tough on him. She worried he was drying out.

Yes! Of course we had water for the parched frog, limping into the home stretch of his 3,000-mile journey. Surely — once the frog was OK — we’d hugged hello for a long time.

Funny — we’ve kept tabs on Facebook and emailed and talked on the phone, yet when I think of Candace, I see her unfolding out of that front seat, taking care not to jostle her pet frog and quickly relaying his urgent need for water.

Life’s Shake-ups Lead Us Back

Each chapter of my life has brought a best friend. Then the page turns and life changes. We fall out of synche. I move away. Or she moves away. She gets married. Maybe she’s back in town, but I’m traveling a bunch then, or have moved away. We try to stay in touch, but it’s easy to drift.

Now in my “midlife,” I’ve collected many chapters with many best friends around the country. We no longer talk or see each other as much as we did when our daily lives overlapped. 

That’s OK. We don’t need each other day-to-day anymore.

Then something happens. Life shakes us up with a divorce, an illness, the death of someone close to us. 

Or, in this case, a global tragedy unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.

We reach out, knowing whenever we connect, we will slip right back into that familiar, comforting bubble of friendship. We pick right back up again. These folks remind us of the joys and heartaches we’ve already lived through.

As we all cope with this COVID-19 pandemic, I am longing for connection to people I love, both family and friends — also known as “family of choice.”

Big Lessons from One Little Dinner

This Thanksgiving in February blog project began with the story of how my broken family-of-origin moved beyond pain and bitterness to grow closer after my dad recovered from a grave illness. We celebrated his recovery with a delayed, but otherwise traditional Thanksgiving dinner — among a group including his ex-wives and daughters that had never really celebrated Thanksgiving all together.

But we were all connected through my dad — and had functioned beautifully to help him recover from his near-death experience. I’m drawn to relive and tell this story, I think, for its many lessons. Re-connecting can bring healing, and peace. Often — not always.

As we live through a pandemic, I hope we emerge better connected. Real-time voice calls over clicks and texts. Re-connections that help us cope. More peace and healing than the vast individual and collective pain.

Maybe the time has come to trust whatever triggers urge you to call someone you are missing. You know best. You’ll know what to say. Each of us has friends we are missing. I’ve yet to find a family without a painful estrangement.

Maybe it’s time?

Reaching for Roots

In these quarantine weeks, I’ve looked for ways to connect with family members and family roots. Baking my grandmother’s recipe for Slovakian, braided “pascha” bread with yellow raisins got me through Easter weekend. My mom and I traded pictures of our rising dough. My uncle and I traded pictures of our finished loaves. All from the same recipe — from a woman we called “Sweetie” who was an Army nurse in World War II. She explored Europe and fell in love with my grandfather there. Our family grew out of that horrific time. That brought me comfort.

So does re-connecting with good friends. In this last decade, I’ve prioritized my family-of-origin and my “new” family with my husband and stepsons. This was a conscious choice. Our boys — my stepsons — were already teenagers when I met them. I knew how much of their lives I’d already missed, and that they’d be all grown up in a blink.

And so — I’ve neglected some of those beloved friendships and “family of choice” folks from earlier chapters.

When I pick up the phone and explain, even my friends who don’t have kids understand. I’m working my way toward best friends from all my chapters.

On that Friday afternoon phone call, Candace and I spent a few minutes sharing hellos, our relief to hear each other’s voices, and our shock and grief at living through the same nightmare unfolding in slow-motion.

They were coping, she said, both working from home in a two-room city apartment. They had masks, plenty of food in the freezer and were doing OK.

So is our family. Everyone is healthy. We are adjusting to new realities. We’re coping. We’re disappointed over cancellation of my younger stepson’s college baseball season, which was off to a magical start. And my older stepson’s wedding plans have been thrown upside down.

Keeping everyone safe and healthy is most important, Candace and I agreed. Yet, each of us has twice been a bride, so we know how those weeks leading up to a wedding for a bride are supposed to be an extra-happy time to cherish, not full of cancellations and uncertainty. Candace understands how my heart aches for our kids.

Our conversation was tremendously comforting. 

Dreaming Above the Treetops

The next week, I dreamed of the house where Candace and I once lived. In my dream, it had a new, three-season porch off the back that looked over the river valley, and we sat talking in front of a wall of pictures from everything that’s happened in our lives since we lived in that house — second marriages, new families, new homes and towns, new careers, new projects.

No one knows when we’ll be able to visit in person, hug and catch up over a bottle of wine. We’re holding onto our connection, texting every few days.

I send pictures of the scenery in our farm town, little video messages from our dogs. Pictures of spring blooms. One spring evening, I made a quick video of the singing peepers at our state park. A bat swooped through the purple sky behind me.

“Candace! Frogs & Halloween — just for you! In one message!”

At first, this was my way to help, to support someone — my friend, in the raging US epicenter of the pandemic. But I soon realized this connection is helping me get through, and cope with the anxiety and uncertainty of this time. One text message, one phone call, one uplifting reminder of love and connection at a time.

This wicked problem is too big for any one of us to fix. But we can each focus on taking care of ourselves, being kind and taking care of each other through connection. We can love each other through it, one moment at a time.