A little after lunch a window popped open on my desktop, with a single word inside it. “Hello”. The biggest grin spread across my face, and has remained ever since - not because of the word, but because of it’s sender.
Once upon a time - before Facebook, Tumblr, or WordPress existed, there was a social network called MySpace. It seems hard to believe now that MySpace was “the place” to keep in touch with people online, to make new friends, to post your thoughts, to listen to music, and to hang out.
One evening while bored I ended up browsing the various discussion areas, and ended up talking to a group of people about the books they had been reading. The group of people whittled down over a few days to just two of us. We became friends.
She became one of the few people that knew me both before, and after children. We shared countless cups of coffee from opposite sides of the world, picked each other up when down, and sought each other out when lonely. We built an incredible friendship that required no effort, and carried no expectation.
And then life happened.
Over the course of the last four years we have caught up with each other’s adventures perhaps once or twice a year. We re-appear in the dead of night, at unexpected moments on trains, or while halfway between here and there - vibrating in a pocket, or chiming in the darkness.
And we smile…