A friend left a message on my work phone yesterday whom I hadn’t heard from in over ten years. We spent a lot of time together in 1994, when we were both living around Los Angeles, and then kept in touch for a few years after I moved east, but had lost track of each other. I’d tried finding her on the web and via Facebook, but she has a common name and I never managed to track down an actual address, e-mail address or phone number. I’m very grateful that she found me (searching Unitarian + Amy Zucker did the trick) and “walked across that burning bridge.”

We talked for an hour and only scratched the surface. So much has happened in our lives: illnesses, operations, new careers, divorces and marriages, the arrival of children and grandchildren, the death of the person who brought us together as friends. We still connect in that effortless click of conversation. I feel like someone deposited a wonderful, beribboned gift on my doorstep, when it’s not even my birthday.

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