Gasoline on a long-forgotten bonfire...

Yesterday was one of those once-in-a-lifetime days that you can’t really believe happened. All expectations exceeded. I always find that these make up for a few of those days where no expectations were met. You see, when I lived in Germany as a kid I had a best friend in school. Her name was…well, it still is her name :) … Christina. About a year and a half before my family moved back to Canada our friendship started to fall apart. Christina started to get into a crowd that I wasn’t willing to join. Basically it included our whole grade. What can I say? I was a goody-two-shoes…for which I am still thankful today. :) Anyways, our friendship met a fork in the road and we were both unwilling to compromise. My grade 7 journal is half-filled with angry entries about my evil ex-best-friend. I’m pretty sure I even glued her school picture in there and drew a nasty face on it.

What?

I was 12!

Anywho, I think there were a lot of unspoken jealousies between us as our opposing interests pulled us in very different directions and by the time I moved back to Canada there was little contact between us. I wrote to her a few times and I think she sent me a letter once, but basically we hadn’t heard a thing from one another in 8 years. About half a year before I moved here this summer one of my friends wrote that she had seen Christina recently and that she now had a little baby boy and was still living in Ellefeld. So I decided that when I got to Germany I was gonna look her up. I mean, it’s funny how those matters that seem so life-and-death in a friendship at 12 become a distant memory…even a laughing matter! Well, I never got in touch with her in August when I was first in Ellefeld. I think it was a mixture of anxiety and poor excuses. I mean, it’s kind of a big deal to show up out of the blue at your former best friend’s place after nearly a decade of no contact - especially when there was something akin to bad blood between us. Basically I had no idea who she was anymore and I was freaked. This is the girl that I grew up with. She was like my sister at one point. I was afraid of being disappointed. That we would have nothing to say to one another. It was bad enough that our childhood friendship ended on less-than-satisfying terms. I didn’t want to find out if our paths had grown even further apart. That could just be too painful.

But then I remembered my promise to myself from 5 years ago when I had come to Germany for two weeks with my parents and never called up any of my old school friends. I swore to myself afterwards that I would never let that happen again.

So anyways, Nancy, the mom of the family I always stay with here in Ellefeld…I actually have a permanent bedroom here right now…knew that I wanted to see Christina again and when she ran into her on the street one day she told Christina that I was back in Germany and wanted to get in touch. Nancy told me about this encounter and also said that Christina was very excited about the prospect of meeting up. This gave me the necessary courage yesterday to find out where she was living and ring her doorbell. And you would not believe where she’s living, mom and dad. SUEDSTRASSE 10! She is living right next to our old house!!! How crazy is that? So to keep this blog to a relatively sane length... I spent 8 hours at Christina’s yesterday. We just kept saying over and over how amazing it was to see one another again and we kept apologizing for losing contact over all those years - like two identical broken records playing at the same time...come to think of it that sounds annoying...but it wasn't. The path she chose when we were kids led her into a very dark time, but as is so often the case she woke up a few years ago...albeit pregnant...and realized it. She’s back to my old Christina and I can hardly believe it. And she's the cutest mom ever! :)
Her son Paul’s biological father basically jumped ship once Christina told him she was pregnant but her boyfriend of one year, Denny, lives with them now and has totally become Paul’s father. He’s really great with them and it was wonderful to spend the day with just Christina and the evening with her and Denny.
It was funny cuz when I got there in the afternoon we just hugged and giggled and hugged again. And then we just didn’t know what to say to one another. There was so much to talk about but neither of us had any clue how to start. It was so strange yet so familiar. So comfortable. Talking about old memories, many of them long forgotten until yesterday, and ready to make some new ones.
She kept saying that Nancy had told her I would probably get in touch with her again at the beginning of October and she said she’s been waiting for me to ring her doorbell every day since then (meaning she waited 28 days!!!). And she said that not a day has gone by in that apartment where she hasn’t thought of me living in that old brick house next to hers…all the hours she spent jumping on my bed…all those Canadian homemade chocolate chip cookies and muffins. (Tons of greetings from her to you guys, mom and dad. So many of her memories include you two. :) ) It’s hard to think about the time…the years!…we’ve lost. But thankfully we’re not old and wasting away quite yet. :) It’s amazing though how quickly an old flame can be rekindled. I mean, I got there at 3 in the afternoon and left at 11pm! Forget a flame rekindled…it’s more like throwing gasoline on a dying bonfire.

I like metaphors.

And guess what? She and her boyfriend wanna move to Canada one day! Denny is totally obsessed. I’m like their dream connection. Lol. How cool would that be? Haha.

In any case, I just had to share this with you. How many more crazy things like that can happen this year yet? I’m throwing all my measly expectations out the window. They don’t even come close to the actual experiences I’ve had in the last 3 months.