Overcoming the Parent/Non-Parent Gulf

My friend Patricia recently had a baby girl -- her first child.  I'm tickled for her and yet also sad because I know she'll disappear from my life for the next decade or two.

She protests.  She says it won't happen. But I've seen it time and time again.  Baby comes and friendships with non-parents aren't possible.

Oh sure, my friends return, eventually.  They pack their kids off to college, pour themselves a glass of wine and then suddenly the absence of their non-parental friends registers in their consciousness and they give me a call.  

It's always wonderful to reconnect.  But I sure do miss them in the interim.

Alex is a case in point.  We met circa 1985 at the University of Michigan.  He and his girlfriend at the time taught me weight-room basics, how to throw a kickass dinner party for twenty and how to turn academic conferences into wonderful romps.

We've visited back and forth over the years -- most recently in 2000.  Since then, life has intervened...in the form of his two small children.

We reconnected via Facebook a year ago.  Since then, we've tried to chat by phone -- and failed.  We've shared a solid year of phone tag, given our mis-matched schedules.

I doubt we would've been able to break through the parent/non-parent barrier, were it not for my Fifty Frolics project.  Well, that and the San Diego Convention Center.  Happily, all my academic friends visit the SDCC from time to time.  It's only a two hour drive away -- perfect for reconnecting with long distance friends.

When Alex informed me he'd be in San Diego for a conference this month, I saw the opportunity for a frolic.

We hadn't been able to connect on the phone for a year...or to email or Skype or IM or any of these technologies that's shrunk the world...but it was easy as pie to meet in person.  I simply drove down and picked Alex up during a gap in his conference schedule.  We spent the next three hours chatting as we frolicked along the San Diego shore.  

How very good it was to be with my friend, after a twelve year absence.  It didn't seem like we'd been apart at all -- we babbled as if our most recent conversation had been paused days ago. These are the most gratifying of reconnections -- when we slip back into each others' lives as if we'd never been apart. 

When my time with Alex in San Diego drew to a close, we quickly planned a subsequent Frolic -- a canoe outing when I'll be visiting the East Coast in the summer.

Chalk up another victory for the 50 Frolics project:  it provided the impetus to end a twelve year pause in a friendship.