Reconnections

Once again, I must marvel at the miracle of the internet, if only for the wonderful way it brings me back in touch with people from many lives ago, as far back as the first grade. It seems fitting that all this reconnecting takes place just a few weeks after seeing New York-based C and her kids after not having seen each other for
six years.

First, despite the fact that FACEBOOK irritates me, I am grateful that my gradeschool classmate M was able to find me. She, who I had not seen since we all graduated in the 7th grade at good old Maria Montessori Cooperative School. M is/was/is one of those children who look ageless - at age 10. Back then, she already had a womanly face as well as a good measure of womanly wisdom. She had a great spray of black hair, every strand of it sprang out in finely coiled kinks and her eyebrows were already arched in perfect parentheticals.

Today, she has a blog to keep her folks back in the Philippines updated on her own little family - a husband and an adorable daughter - now living in Seattle. I was heartened to see her familiar face - seemingly ageless - and enchanted to see her baby girl who looks very much like her, and yet not.

Like me, she turns 40 at the end of the year. We have exchanged emails - summarising our life stories, which are still intensely and mutually fascinating, even in their very broadest strokes. And as I read between her lines, I still have a very strong sense of the person that she is - how she still has so much of the girl I used to know, the one who could braid her hair in a manner of seconds, sew like a goddess of domesticity and sing along to Air Supply, and look, even at age 13, disapproving and school-marmish at many of my childish antics. It is good that she found me. One of the little gifts this month has had to offer.

But that isn't even the end of my story. Just days away from our mini-online reunion, I was sitting at the PC and who should pop in to IM-chat with me but D. The story of D is also an amazing one. When I was in the first grade, D was in kindergarten and was "best friends" with my cousin J. Then she got moved up to first grade, and we became fast friends. She was very fair and sandy-haired due to Caucasian grandparents, and we were such good friends that I even invited her to spend my birthday with me and my family at my house. Interesting that I don't recall specific conversations, though I remember quite clearly the spirit and the authenticity of our friendship - how we always had so much to talk about, so much to share. Our friendship lasted just one year, as she soon moved to the US, and we lost touch completely.

In 2003, I found her through her architect cousin, and after the initial thrill of reconnection, we have maintained "chatting" contact. Anyway, D now lives in Sunnyvale - she is a scientist in Silicon Valley. She too has a husband and a daughter.

When she popped up, I told her about M, whom she also remembers. Perhaps they will get together soon. But D also wanted to tell me something. How she had been thinking about me recently. I asked her why.

She asked me if I recalled the movie Sky Riders. "Don't you remember that movie?" D asked me. I had to admit I was drawing a blank. She continued, "It's about these hang gliders, who save these kidnapped kids held for hostage in a cave?" The description stirred a very faint bell. I told her it sounded vaguely familiar.

"You told me to watch that movie."
"I did?"
"You told me it was a great movie and at the time, it was showing at Rizal Theatre, and you told me to ask my folks to watch it."
"Back in first grade?"
"Yes. It is a great movie. The hang-gliders make a daring rescue."

I waited, not quite sure what the point was.

"I saw that movie because you said it was great, and it got me interested in hang gliding. It's the reason I took hang-gliding lessons."

"You took hang-gliding lessons? You mean as an adult?"

"Yes.

"And have you rescued anybody?"

"No, but I did marry somebody. I married my instructor and we went flying in the Andes mountains, and that's why our daughter is named Andes."

I started to get it.

"Marrying someone is a kind of rescuing," I said.

"I just wanted to tell you that. And that I had thought of you. Because we just got a copy of Sky Riders"

I makes no real difference in the world to know this, not really. But I was glad D told me. It was yet another unexpected gift.