The Circular Healing of Reunion

Over the course of my life I have, on occasion, hit the reset button. In the face of change--some by choice and others (like recent) not so much by choice, I have set out on a significantly different path than the one I may have had just the day, or days before. In the wake of some of those redirections I have sometimes left behind friendships I should or could have maintained, neighborhoods, at times even family.

Maybe we have all, to a lesser or some degree, done the same. Lives change, careers change. We grow in one direction or another, and before we know it we are slowly or suddenly someone completely different than we used to be or imagined we may one day be. Our lives get busy in our new choices and the significance of those who used to be important to us, even a part of our daily lives in some cases, slips away.

I left Kansas City initially—thirty years ago—in disgust. I was unhappy both at home and socially and languishing in a fit of indecision; I had watched many of my friends leave for school and managed to get myself into a minor scrape with the law. I remember, at the time, feeling a great deal of anger, all misdirected, at people I thought had devalued me because of the trouble I had gotten myself into. I was resolved to walk away. Little did I know how wrong I had it all.

I vividly remember the day I left ; suddenly moved to a southern Missouri town with a Baptist college. They had convinced me that it was exactly the kind of place I needed to get my life back on track, where the environment limited my opportunities to find trouble and the campus might resurface my intellectual abilities. I think my brother had even higher hopes of resurrecting my interest in God and religion, but he was completely unaware of my resolve and convictions already formed by that time in my life. It wasn’t happening. Quite the opposite, it only added bricks. I was dropped into Small Town, America, surrounded by a host of people that knew nothing about me nor I them, and I was off on my new direction. Strings were pulled, and in a period of about 24 hours I had taken an ACT and enrolled in a college I had never even visited.

It didn't take long for me to find kindred spirits; by the end of the first semester there I had a circle of new friends, some belonging on that campus about as much as I did, others just a little on the ornery side. I began to feel comfortable again. The friendships I made there still run deep for me. But after a couple of years we all disbanded for one reason or another. Some ran out of money for school (it was the Reaganomics years), some ran out of willpower. I think that within the space of a couple of weeks I decided to leave school and start a full-time career, tanked a class or two, and hit the road. It was time for another new direction.

What followed was a nomadic, eleven-year stretch with a railroad contractor, where I could travel all over the country for about nine months out of the year and spend winters at home. It was the perfect fit for me at the time; about the time I tired of being in the familiar for three months it was time to hit the road, and on the road I could be in a different town every night. There wasn't even a consistency in the few months I spent at home. At one point I lived with friends in the old neighborhoods, then moved downtown for another winter, then in with someone who was to be my first major relationship. It was then I ran off into my bohemian years, where I was anything but career minded or responsible. I probably did things to my body then that I will someday regret, even though I refuse to dismiss those years of my life with any sense of guilt.

That relationship changed, then ended, and I turned my focus on to moving things ahead with my career. I cut my hair, sold the house, moved to Illinois, and things started happening for me. Then came my next relationship, marriage, and shortly after, kids and years of suburbia and cars and houses and all the trappings. As a family we relocated several times for my work, and it all seemed like it was just another step in the process. Each home and neighborhood seemd like a stepping stone to the next. We enjoyed every neighbor we made friends with, and thought that each one was someone we would surely keep in touch with, but time and priorities and every day life slowly faded them all to memory.

Divorce was the next major milestone. Things got dark for a while. Then they got better. Then dark again. Then better. Then better, longer. Nowadays they stay mostly better, with a sprinkling of dark here and there (when the girls are away). Life is pretty good, though.

Then, in the midst of winter, where the weather and psyche seem parallel, Megan convinced me that I should get on Facebook. "Dad," she said, "mom got on Facebook and she has heard from a lot of her old friends from when she was younger. Everyone is doing it!" One of the best ways to convince me to not do something is to tell me that "everyone" is doing it. Even more so when you tell me my ex is doing it. But, my curiosity got the best of me and I took a peek at it. Then curiosity nudged me a little further and I logged on. I populated my profile, not really sure of what I was doing, but positive that I was going through an exercise in futility.

I was wrong.

Suddenly I was talking with old friends I was sure had either long written me off, were angry that I had never stayed in touch, or whose lives were vastly different than mine and to which I had no relevant connection. Each new contact seemed to be, sadly enough, an affirmation, a reconnection that told me that the ghosts and feelings of disconnect I carried where my own creation, and that I was a little more valued than I believed.

I first got to enjoy chatting with an old friend who went west and whom I never should have let out of my life. Then I bumped into another friend it was fun to reminisce with over the phone all night one night. I found my old partner in "crime," and the two of us put some closure to an open end we both had long lived with, and discovered the fascinating number of parallels in our lives since. There has been the friend or two that I have only had time for a brief word with, feeling better just to know they are out there, still around, and have not befallen some fate that we all have risk of, given the years we have under us. Then there was the friend who reminded me how one kind deed, one that I had long forgotten and not really known the significance of, impacted her life and maybe the lives of some other women as well.

I would be the last to extoll the benefits of cyber social networking, but when I look at some of the connections and reconnections I have made, it's almost as if there is a common, bonded message emanating from the little screen in front of me. I think it goes something like this:

"Helllo, old friend. There you are. I've wondered about you from time to time over these years. It's good to see you are well. It looks like our hearts are still the same, even though we look and act a little different. We are shaped. Our experiences, be they joys or trials, have become our wealth. And we see everything from a different perspective, probably a more healthy one. We're all good."

So I think I have come full circle, back to where things were--and are again--a little simpler, and with people who really knew me and still know me for who I was before I headed out into the Chill and morphed into what was expected of me to succeed.

It feels good here. I think I'll hang a while.

Originally published 7/11/09

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.