In Which The Past Is Revisited

What grief it is to love some people like your own
blood, and then to see them simply disappear;
to feel time bearing us away
one boxcar at a time.

-Tony Hoagland, "Two Trains"

I was awakened one morning last week by a phone call from a number I didn't know. It had a Cleveland area code, and when I answered it, it turned out to be a friend from high school, with whom I haven't spoken - or even heard of (she's not on Facebook) - in about five years. She told me she'd gotten my phone number from a mutual friend, and we spent a few minutes (she was on her way to work) catching up.

It was good to hear from her. We were very good friends "back in the day," as it were, who had fallen out of touch almost by necessity: she is a year younger than me, and when I went off to college, she was a senior in high school. I had often thought and wondered what had become of her, but because the concerns of the present almost inevitably carry more weight than those of the past, I never, whilst ensconced in my day-to-day life, found opportunity to contact her.

It would have been impossible to inform her about all the goings on of the last five years in the small amount of time we had to talk, so I didn't even try, and kept my answers to her questions general. Before we hung up she asked if I live anywhere near Corning, New York, because she will be there next weekend for a glass-blowing convention. I've never even heard of Corning, New York, and told her I would look it up. Though I guess the ball is in my court now, I haven't called her back yet.

Here's the thing: I have come to accept, for better or worse, that one of the inevitable truths of life is that we fall out of touch with people - even people we love, people we don't necessarily want to lose. I do not say that this is right, or that I am happy with it, only that, for me at least - and many other people, I think - it's the way it is. I believe that there are different friends and acquaintances for different seasons of our lives, and for someone like me, who grew up in one place but currently resides in another - one that is much farther away - this is especially true. I did not want these people to leave my life: it just happened.

When I think about why this happens, I think about the world as it is today: ironically, though more options for getting in touch with someone are available now than at any other point in human history, for some reason, we don't really take proper advantage of them. Think about it: this week you'll write "happy birthday" on half a dozen Facebook walls, but will you really be saying anything? Furthermore, whose walls will they be - those of your true friends, the people who know your secrets and your history and your hopes, or those of someone you knew in high school, with whom you have never had a direct, face-to-face conversation?

People in bygone eras, of course, didn't have this problem. If you lived in the same village all your life, you never had to say goodbye to anyone. Losing touch, therefore, is part of the price we pay for progress: the more advanced, the more "civilized" we get, the more we retreat into (as Auden would put it) "the cell of [ourselves]."

Well. I did not mean for this to be so sad. Then again, as everyone knows, not everything in life is happiness. I have not yet decided if I will call my friend back - or even look up the location of Corning, New York. Someday, maybe, I will find the time and energy to contact all those people who, though they mean so much to me, I have not properly kept in touch with. But for now, like Tony Hoagland's train, my life keeps rolling on.