Monday, August 25, 2008

Finding My Will

A post I did in June, Who Would You Google, about Bill's long-lost friend Will getting in touch with him, has lead to some interesting results for me. If you recall, I mentioned my dear friend from 1st grade, Beatrice. She and I were really good friends for a couple of years and then boom, nothing. Maybe we were in separate classrooms after 1st grade and we just drifted apart. That will remain a mystery.

After I wrote the post about how she is the one person from my past that I'd like to be back in touch with, I googled her......again. For perhaps the 20th time in 10 years. WHAM-O! A hit. A lead. She joined a club and her name appeared in a .pdf of the clubs meeting minutes. I emailed the club's president and explained the situation. He said he knew her parents and would email her mom a note. I waited and waited and waited.

Well, not really.

Within 24 hours her mom emailed me!! I was excited to see her mom's name on that email. She said they often think of my family. She called Beatrice first thing after reading my email and forwarded her my info.

That night, after exchanging several emails during the day, I was on the phone with Beatrice.

It was surreal in a way because I remember her as an 8 or 9 year old child and hearing an adult voice on the phone was hard to process at first. I kept picturing this little girl with long pigtails.

Turns out, she actually lived back in Cleveland for almost 9 years in the late 90's-early 2000's. She even drove down my old street once to see if she could remember my house. Here is the irony: we moved out of that house in July 1986. Beatrice moved to California in June 1986. She and I had been going to the same school until 8th grade yet our memories of each other basically end long before that. She didn't know I had moved so she would have never found me on that old street. She couldn't even find the house (heck, even I can't tell it is my old house) because the people that bought it turned a 1 floor ranch into a 2-story colonial! We moved two streets over from the house she just moved out of. She tried to google me, but guess what, nothing comes up under my maiden name.

We caught up for over an hour. Giving the highlights and lowlights of the past 25 years. She didn't know about my Dad, so that was hard. She talked about how she remembered him coming home from work when she used to eat dinner over. She remembers him always wearing a baseball cap. Yep, that was Dad. More like the trucker style hats that were so cool a few years ago. She remembers visiting my Grandparents in PA. They are both long gone. We talked about how much fun our summers were in her pool. She told me the pool is now filled in. So sad, our giggles and splashes buried under 12 ft. of concrete. We found things out about each other that we didn't even know when we were kids or maybe we knew, but just don't remember. Like our love of reading and researching and how that lead us down similar career paths for a while.

Knowing where she hung out when she lived back here, it is safe to say that we were probably in some of the same places at the same time, like the E185th St Festival. Like ships passing in the night. Most likely, I was sailing with Captain Morgan at the festiva,l so my ship would have been tipsy. She said she would have recognized me and would have said something. Would I have known her? Maybe, maybe not since my memories is of an 8 year old girl. I do think that deep down I would have sensed something familiar about her and asked. We were very close for several years and I think I might have just known it was her without really knowing.

I feel like my childhood past is kind of complete now. There are no more question marks out there. I have a new perspective on memories I had long since locked away and some I didn't even remember.

I have a new "old" friend. I found my Will.

1 comment:

Elsha said...

That is great news! It is always great to find an old friend who you had lost touch with!