It’s official; I am now in touch with everyone I have ever met.

It used be that people lost touch.  I made friends at a summer job or met a boy in creative writing class and we had to write actual letters in order to keep knowing each other.

here is an essay I wrote back when Google became a verb all about those infamous searches we do to locate our pasts.

Up until last night, there was one person missing from the parade of old friends.  OKay, fine, he’s the one old boyfriend who seemed to drop off the face(book) of the planet.  I actually wrote about him in here but havent done much searching…

I don’t know where I pictured this used-to-be boy now man living, but I hoped he’d be a writer because we’d met through a writing class and he’d written the funniest postcard ever and I helped him learn how to end a story.  How did our story end?  With my immaturity.  He wanted a real girlfriend.  I didn’t know how to be that.

But don’t feel bad for him.  It worked okay.  See, the reason I hadn’t seen his name in the publishing world or our overlapping alumni newsletters is because he changed his surname back to his mother’s maiden name, published tow bestsellers, wrote screenplays for huge blockbusters starring those golden people who are always on the cover of weekly mags, and – wait for it  – married an a-list actress.

How do I feel reading that from my comfortable, quirky farmhouse in which my four children are running around in various stages of undress waiting for one of their favorite meals, my pediatrician husband is singing Ben Folds, and I am stirring polenta for the second time this week?

I feel fine.  David, I am so glad life worked out for you, so happy for your successes in work and love, and I have just the slightest bit of regret or perhaps it’s that wonder at what would have been.  Your actress wife is really funny and pretty and I would happily give back the t-shirt and boxers you gave me, but I will never let go of that funny postcard.