Several months back I fell I love with a word I found on Pinterest: Retrouvaille: The joy of meeting or finding someone again after a long separation.
It made me realize how many friends I’ve lost touch with. Time passes by so quickly, and friends come and go especially with every larger life event; starting to study, moving abroad, getting a new job, becoming a mom . . .
My friends are scattered all of the world. Many of them cross my mind frequently even though I have not seen or spoken since years. It’s when I started to blog that I also started to be more aware of how and with whom I communicated.
Throughout the years communication has truly changed massively. When I went on my world trip, when I was 19, I would call my parents at max once a month, through a very expensive collect call. In my early twenties, when I was studying in Groningen, I would call my German boyfriend once a week, through special pre-dial numbers that made international phone calls slightly cheaper. Back then, a 10-minute phone call was equally expensive as a (student) dinner for two including a bottle of wine.
Nowadays it has become normal to be able to speak to pretty much anyone, in any corner of the world, at near to no cost at all. I’ve been online a lot lately. Rediscovering several old friends on Facebook brought back a ton of memories. Last week I spontaneously decided to ask my best friend from high school if she would like to come meet me and my kids. So we did and we had a terrific afternoon and evening. Our kids got along marvelous, and we were able to indulge in reminiscence and catch up on what happened during the past 20+ years.
In Germany, there is a word called: “Anknüpfen.” When you have a rope or a thread, and you tie a knot at the end so you can extend the thread. You can continue where you left off. That’s what I felt like yesterday. How easy it was just to continue again where we left off as if we had only just lost sight of each other.
Probably, everyone, has some of those lose ends that are truly worth tying a knot onto . . . Don’t you?
