Life in Geezerville: Friends Edition

Yesterday I received a call from Guam. I lived in Guam eons ago and I still have a friend who lives there. We email each other daily. Since we cannot hop in our cars to visit each other we've done the next best thing. I've taken cruises that stopped on Guam, and she's flown to the US mainland. What we do best is write each other every day. I start my day with a good morning email to her--and she does the same. Throughout the day, we send each other messages -- not long messages -- sometimes just a funny or two -- sometimes a quiz. It's a comfortable routine of 2 friends keeping in touch even though there are thousands of miles of ocean between us. Funny thing is, when I say "good morning" to her, she's already in bed. When it's 6 AM at my home, it's 11 PM on Guam. There's a 17 hour time gap between us. There's only a small window of time when both of us are awake at the same time. This makes calling difficult and why email and texting are so important.

Then about 2 months ago, I stopped getting emails. Between now and then, I tried to call her and discovered that the numbers I had for her and her son did not work. (BTW this is not unusual for Guam, as the phone system is unreliable.) I did the next best thing I sent her a snail mail letter with a crocheted flower bouquet (you know me). I did not hear from her. I scoured the online newspaper, the Pacific Daily News (PDN) and did not see any news about her...that was good. Since she's a geezer, like me, I was getting more worried that something horrible had happened. I did not know how to help her from my location, but I needed to know what was going on.

Then something special happened. I'm checking out at the grocery store and my phone rings. It's says GUAM on the screen...what's going on? You know that feeling you get when you receive a call in the middle of the night that you KNOW is bad news...well I had that feeling. It's my friend's son calling me.  I said hello...how is your mom as fast as I could. And he says to me "She wants to talk to you!" Oh Glorious Day! My friend was alive and she wanted to talk to me. I told my husband to pay the checker and I talked to my friend for a wonderful 18 minutes and 48 seconds. I'm smiling and crying at the same time. We did a quick catch-up; she said she was tired and we said we would call each other next week.

The moral of the story...stay in touch with your friends. They are part of the fabric of your lives. They are most special people. You love them and they love you. It does not matter if they are across the street or across the dateline on a tiny 212 square mile speck of an island 13 degrees north of the equator.  Call them, write to them, visit them! My friend called me and we talked. What a day! Remember, we're all in this together.