Remembering

This morning I was looking through my inbox for an email. I couldn't find it, so I started looking through different folders. A lot of them have old stuff from years ago when I saved and organized almost every email. I don't do that quite as much now.

In one folder, I found a couple emails from someone I couldn't remember. I had to read one almost through before I could place her. That was a bit strange. Most people, though, I could remember, even if I hadn't heard from them or even thought about them for years. I wonder what they're doing now.

I found several from one particular friend. We've always kept in touch to some extent, and now we're on Facebook so it's a lot easier. Many years ago we spent a couple summers with Child Evangelism Fellowship, leading Bible clubs through southern Ontario. We were partners for part of one summer; the other summer (I think she only did 2 summers, but maybe she did all three with me) we only saw each other for the 2 weeks of training. Then we lived together for a year when I was at Brock. We have only seen each other one other time, I think in 2001. It's a good friendship, though: the type that could pick up where it left off.

These emails come from the couple years after we lived together. Some of them are silly and some are sad and some are sweet. Most are a mix of whatever came to mind; that's the way we wrote to each other. Somewhere I also have some letters that she wrote. We both communicate so much easier with written rather than spoken words.

As I read the emails I remembered and I laughed and I cried a bit and I missed my friend terribly. I missed the "us" that we were back then, when life was simpler (or at least differently complicated). We've both grown and changed so much, and that's good. That's the way it should be, and it hasn't harmed our friendship, but it had to change as well. And right now I miss that year and that friend and that person who I was and that life.

And I wouldn't change who I am and where I am now. I don't want to live back then again, but I would like to visit.