2 posts tagged “friendship”

Unless you never leave your house and don't turn on your TV, computer, or even radio, there's slim chance that your world hasn't been somewhat impacted by the loss of some major public figures in the last week.

Farrah Fawcett.
Michael Jackson.
Billy Mays.

Even if you aren't overly emotionally impacted by the passing of these celebrities, their last adventures color your world. They're all the talk over water coolers, grocery store lines, bar stools, blogs and neighborhood fences. I'm not the type of person who dwells much on celebrity figures. But yesterday morning when Lee and I woke up and were lying in bed channel surfing, we paused on a station that was playing video after video of Michael Jackson's greatest.

Always the moonwalk in those white suits. Always that crazy thing he did with his arms. Always the robotic but somehow fluid back-up dancers. Always those Scotland-yard looking policemen chasing after the truth about Billy Jean or The Smooth Criminal.

I couldn't help but think of the impact he had on my pre-teen and teenage years. Him and Farrah both, actually. I remember being glued to MTV and as fascinated by the Thriller video as any other kid my age. I remember getting a Farrah haircut and being so darn proud of my "feathers." I remember wanting to be one of Charlie's Angels and me and my friends making silly juvenile references to "Beat It."

I never understood how people can become so attached to celebrities that they'll camp outside their homes and wail and mourn over their passing. When I was growing up, my friend Kim's mother's had Velvet Elvises (Velvet Elvi?) all over her living and dining rooms. I learned to pick my own steamed crabs at their dining room table. Once, I pulled a claw too hard and a piece of crab meat flew out and smacked a Velvet Elvis on the cheek. I thought Kim's mom was going to smack me upside my head. When Elvis died, I recall her lying on her couch, sobbing as if her world had ended. She had a strong drink of something and took a valium.

I don't get that, but I do get the sense of sadness and loss and the feeling that there's a big empty space left by these people who somehow end up in positions to so dramatically impact and change our culture.

But you know what? Celebrities are not the only people whose passing will leave sadness and loss and emptiness in their wake even if you never "knew" them in the seen-in-person sense.  At least not these days.

I've never met Karen, otherwise known as CosmicCrayola or Cosmic. But through a little corner of the online world called Diaryland - the place where I still keep my private journal today - we've known each other for years. Karen was one of the first people I began reading after starting my own journal there, and we've remained part of the same small-but-big circle ever since, in spite of lots of changes in both D-land and our lives since those early entries.

Cosmic fits her so well. She couldn't have chosen a better moniker for her diary if she'd tried. She is so grounded and real, yet so way-out-there funny and inspiring in her shining and even everyday moments. Since I've been granted access to a slice of her world through her writing, I have come to know a woman who has been through incredible medical struggles, both her own and her husband Terry's. Sometimes it seemed their lives were a roller-coaster of one or both of them battling illness and hospitalization. Yet through it all, most of her journal entries have been about those moments we all hold dearest to our hearts. Family visits. Movie nights with the hubby. Good food. Jokes that hit us all in the funny bone. Daughters and grandchildren. Writing and publishing her book. We've emailed back and forth about a friend of hers getting a ferret. 

Many Diarylanders have met in person along the way. I've formed my share of friendships that transcended our online presence through the site. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to meet Cosmic. Others have. I wish I'd been there. But I didn't have to be to be touched by Karen and have her crack me up even on some of my worst days.

I've been behind in my Diaryland reading. So I was a bit stunned when I saw a Facebook status update from Golfwidow that sent me to Karen's diary. There, in the slice of colorful online space where she has written countless entries chronicling his medical battles - with the love, fear and humor that only she could - her husband Terry had posted an update letting us all know that Karen's longtime struggle is winding down. She'd been given just days, and that was a few days ago.

I may not get what I call "extreme celebrity mourning." But I am well aware of how much we can be touched by people we've never actually met through words and screens. Karen is my friend. Because she is still here, I pray for a miracle and hope that this isn't a farewell post but rather just an observation about how much people we haven't met can come to mean something good to us and change our lives. There will be an empty space in my heart that was usually filled with a laugh or a smile courtesy of Karen if she goes someplace where her regular routine doesn't feature blog updates.

It has been a strange week. And in our little corner of the online world, Karen is a shining star who will leave a huge empty space if she does take that journey alongside Michael, Billy and Farrah. I pray for her, Terry and their family.
 

I'm not a mom, and I haven't been a student for years.

So I guess in some ways, I owe my job for letting me hang on to a feeling I always kind of liked - that "back to school" feeling. I was one of those students who always adored it - the coming of fall, the buying of school clothes and supplies, the meeting new classmates and teachers and finding out what my next year or term's classes would be like. That hopeful sense September brought of starting something new and exciting began for me in middle school and carried through college.

In college, there were always at least two starts a year, in fall and spring. But somehow, that "back to schoolness" never carried over into the beginning of the spring term. It was tied to September the way Christmas is to December or Halloween is to October, at least in my head.

When you work in a college, you still get that feeling, even if you don't have children of your own and you aren't slinging a backpack over your shoulder yourself. Campus is often seriously quiet in the summer. Sure, we offer classes. But it isn't a regular term, so instead of having thousands of students milling about there a just a few hundred spread out over the day. On a decent-sized campus, that can feel like a ghost town sometimes.

There's a downside to this for the worker-bees. In the summer, people can be late to work and still grab a primo parking space. Forget that in the fall. At lunchtime in the summer months, you can go to a food vendor and grab a slice of something without waiting in a line of more than two or three people. In the fall, you start remembering to pack a lunch again, because if not you'll spend your whole break in a line.

But for the most part, the good outweighs the bad. You can't help but be energized in that sea of new faces, most of them there in search of ideas and dreams. The hopefulness, nervousness, excitedness and promise seem to permeate the air you're breathing sometimes.

This year is a little different. In the past, at least part of my job has involved working directly with students. I've been in the role of advisor, helping them select the best courses for their situation, and an administrator who helped them resolve more bureaucratic problems. So during the first two weeks of school, those hopeful and sometimes frustrated faces were standing in my office doorway, day-in and day-out, nonstop. It was often overwhelming, but there was nothing better than having someone come in frustrated and close to tears because of some annoying circumstance that new students face, and having them leave reassured and ready to focus on new courses and new friends and all the things college SHOULD be about.

This year, I'm removed from all that, because the project is too intense to spare me for any of the customer service work. Most of the time I'm glad of that. But this time of year, I get a little twang of regret about not being in the thick of things.

Still, when I walk across campus for meetings or to check in with the "home office," I am surrounded by the newness. A girl who looks about 14 but MUST be college-age timidly asks me where a certain lecture hall is, clutching her schedule in her hand like a lifeline.  A guy in a baseball cap who looks like he just got out of bed but is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet anyway wants to know how to get to Financial Aid. And on it goes as I make my way through surroundings that are so familiar to me I could navigate them in my sleep, but to these newcomers are confusing and strange.

I was 26 when I started working at the college - just a few years older than the seniors and younger than many of the non-traditional and grad students. Now, at 38, I could easily be the mother of any of the freshmen and sophomores. Back then, I blended into the crowd and most took me for a student myself (of course, back then we also had a very lax dress code too!). Now, I look like someone who knows what's up. They just know I either work somewhere on the campus, or maybe think I'm a professor.

It's weird.

My friend Sully is off work this week. We became friends back in college, and he stills holds a nostalgic love for the place. To me, campus has become "work." - that's one of the downsides to getting a job where you went to school. To him, it is where we grew up and had more fun and adventure and mischief than we ever would again. He comes up to campus to grab a coffee and soaks in that feeling, and as I meet him for a quick break and we sit outside and drink our javas, I look at the students milling by and wonder which of them are at that very moment walking with a new friend who will become their "Sully," someone who will still be a brother-like friend when they are creeping up on 40 and have been through jobs and marriage and children and possibly divorce or other hard luck, or maybe amazing good fortune.

Then I notice that almost all of them are talking on cells or texting as they walk. And I realize that unlike Sully and I, they will never know a college experience where most students didn't have access to this kind of instantaneous conversation with EVERYONE. They will never know college without the internet and texting and cells and IM.

And in some ways, I think they're incredibly lucky to live in this age where they set foot on campus having already had so much information and communication at their fingertips. I think they are light years ahead of where I started.

But another part of me feels bad for them. At 18, they already have the shackles of instant communication that make it so easy for your life to be one of constant distraction and interruption and to-do's. That comes with the territory of being a grownup, and will happen to them out of necessity soon enough. I hope that having it now doesn't mean they won't experience those long hours I did of reading fiction with a small circle of classmates by a pond, focusing on nothing but the books in our hands and the blades of grass under our butts and the sun in the sky, because the outside world couldn't touch us until we got home to our voicemails. I hope it doesn't mean they won't spend hours and hours talking in the campus coffee shop or at the pub with that classmate who will become an amazing friend, so focused on each other's thoughts and experiences that everything else fades for just a while. Can people still do that when their phones vibrate with a new text every 5 minutes?

Back to school makes me think about everything, in a circular but somehow hopeful way. I love it.