Feest Isolation Days –15 June
Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation from High School in Pennsylvania. Five girlfriends from those bygone days decided to get together this year to celebrate and mark that occasion. We hadn’t all met since we left school. I’m not a fan of Facebook, but it did get us together again.
One of our number has a daughter who married a Brit and lives in London. When she visited her daughter awhile ago we met for the first time and made our plans. Last year I met another of our fabulous five who visited London. That left just two of our group who were friends who hadn’t been in touch since we were eighteen!
The plan had been for the four women and their husbands to come to stay with us in Bristol where we would all spend a few days together before each couple headed off to somewhere or other in Europe. This weekend would have been the planned reunion time. A Spa day! Nice meals together! A concert or a play! All our plans were coronadashed. Instead, we met on Zoom.
Somehow we all picked up right where we had once been and it didn’t matter that nearly fifty years had passed. Sadly, before lockdown and before the virus arrived, one of our number lost her husband. We reached out and hugged as much as one can on Zoom. When the virus is over we will all try for a face to face reunion again. Meantime we will Zoom in another three weeks or so. We have reconnected. Not quite what we wanted, but beats nothing.
At this stage of life, reconnecting is a wonderful thing to do. Reaching out to old friends makes you realise that you were pretty clever as a young person. You chose to hang around people you liked. I can recommend getting in contact once more. You will most likely have a deeper connection than you expect and as we all have plenty of time on our hands, it’s quite a good time to do this! Silver linings and all that.
At home, the rain that has been intermittently around for the past week has done wonders for the garden. It is green and lush and the flower pots and the grass are flourishing. As I suppose we are, too. In our quiet ways we are living our life and enjoying different things.
We watched David Tennent and Michael Sheen in “Staged” on the BBC iplayer and marvelled how the technology is helping us all through this. The six part series is told in fifteen minute or so episodes all on Zoom and perfectly captures some of what our lives in lockdown have been like.
Hope that you are finding ways to reach out that work for you. We don’t seem anywhere near finished with this virus yet! I’d recommend connecting with old pals. They will love to hear from you!
I couldn’t find a reunion comic or image that I liked, but I think ALL of my women friends will hoot with laughter at this one!
Enjoy…sorry chaps….
With love
Kathy x