Only connect

It's funny how you go through so many different phases in life, only to find that maybe you never wandered very far off from your centre in the first place.

My best friend from university was in town yesterday for the first time in six years and it was the first time we'd seen each other since June 2002. It was also the first time we got to hang out, just the two of us, since I don't remember when, and later, the first time Terz got to meet him and his brother.

We started out as the kind of friends that traded emails several times a day (I went to college in the pre-cellphone era), met for dinner at the dorm cafeteria and spent most of the evening hanging out together --- almost everyday. Then there were the weekends at his parents' place, the New Year's Eve I had to borrow a dress off his sister because he failed to inform me that we were signed up for a dressed-to-the-nines party and generally way too much time spent with the (original) Star Wars trilogy.

And then, y'know, life happened.

Different activities in college.
Girlfriends/boyfriends.
Campus jobs (in his case, eventually a career).
Different interests.
Different friends.
Graduation.
Different countries.
Getting married.

Suddenly we're in our early thirties, retelling the by now definitive story of how we met --- but we've got new stories too, about rescued toy cats that travel around the world and kids that aren't ours and wedding rings and airports around the world.

I'm not going to be so glib as to say that nothing's changed after all, but maybe the fragments are coming together.

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