Friends from Far-Flung Places

I'm continually amazed at how the Internet brings people together from far-flung places, and how alike we all are, no matter how far apart we are. For instance, I am friends with a woman from Australia (who is now moving to Switzerland) who is just like the friends I have over for coffee here in the Midwest. I've met women from New Zealand and London and South Africa...all exactly the same as my friends from right here in the good old USA. We can become fast friends in five seconds, as if a yard separated us, not continents.

That's the way it was when I met Heather Cook, who is a really cool person (she helped me out with THE LEGACY, because I was clueless on Nova Scotia-isms), and a Canadian (with a book on reining coming out with Trafalgar Square!). I met her online, through a group of writing mothers, and when she came down here to Indiana and mentioned she'd be in the area, we decided to meet in person. That was a couple years ago, and we've met up every time she's come down from the cold north (there's no way I am ever traveling any further north, not after one trip to WI that nearly turned me into an icicle ;-) Just kidding. I do love the northern part of the world, but I am such a total cold wimp, that it would likely only be a trip in the middle of a heat wave, LOL). She was here again in July, and we had a great, chatty lunch, talking as if we'd known each other for twenty years.

That's the way it is with women, I think. I doubt men can pick up after not seeing each other for a year (maybe they can) and have a conversation as if not a single stitch was dropped. I see my best friend from Massachusetts once a year, and within a split second, it's as if five minutes have passed, not a year. There is never any awkwardness, no matter how much time has passed (and in the early days when I moved to the Midwest, we had no money, so we didn't make it back there so often). We just pick up the thread, knit more strands, and keep the friendship going. Then I go back home, she goes back to her life, and sometimes months can go by without us talking because we're both insanely busy moms, but we both understand that and when we talk, we laugh about how we should talk more often.

But it doesn't matter, because the threads were laid and knitted tight in fourth grade, and will never be broken. I love friendships like that. And love the fact that my friends can be in Massachusetts or Canada or Australia, or right down the street in Indiana, and every one of those threads is there, a network of strong women all around me.

Shirley