Friendship Introspection, Part I

Over the years I have had the pleasure of having moved from one city to another by being the child of a member of the Air Force. Both my mom and my dad (and my step-dad) were active duty at certain points of our lives and so I grew up in never having lived in one place for more than 3 years until we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and I enrolled in 6th grade at Kings Mills Middle School.

I am also an only child. Being an only child and one who has moved around, I honestly don’t have much recollection of my childhood years, especially school years. I don’t remember my friends from those years because they were so random and scattered. I think not having anyone else to connect those times and places to limits my recall capacity in some way. I remember summers, spent with my grandparents in Marion or Ashland, Ohio; or at a Bible camp a couple times. I remember a friend here and there who I saw every summer because they lived near my grandparents or were at camp. But individual grades or teachers are out of reach for my memory and always have been.

Cincinnati and Kings Mills is where things start to settle into my head better and I have a clear memory of my friends there, my teachers, the classrooms, the fun and the laughs and the things we learned. From there my mom and I moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi where I would graduate high school and find another set of friends. I have to say that after years of moving around the States, living in the south truly felt like home for me. I don’t know if it was the pace, the beach, the food, the colors, or everything combined but there is a kinship I feel with the Gulf Coast. I only have to read something from there or start to recall a memory out loud and my drawl will kick in (Brian adores it).

I traveled over to Mobile, Alabama to attend college, graduated and stayed on (even after my mom had moved back “up north") there until 1996, when I decided that it was time to move on. I packed up and headed to Columbus, Ohio where I met and married Brian, where we live now.

Beyond school, my friends came from work. My college years (as well as when I moved to Columbus) were filled with friends from the restaurant and bar world. These are great friends who are seriously down for a good time. The memories (and sometimes the lack there of) that I have of concerts, crawls, football games, after parties, and on and on…oh my. Thank goodness the Internet was not around then. Just sayin’.

However, I am very happy to say that because of the Internet I was able to reconnect with and am able to stay connected with many friends with whom I have lost contact through the years. I’m not a good letter writer and I don’t really like to gab on the phone, so email and Facebook have made the world smaller for me.

To be continued . . .