Reunions

There is much to be said for modern technology, especially websites that help you find old friends or family members that you have lost touch with as the years have gone by.   I am specifically thinking of Facebook and how it helped me reconnect with old friends from my childhood and grade school and old friends I once worked with but lost touch with.   It's amazing what results you can obtain just by putting a friend or family members name in the search engine and waah laaah!   You can immediately connect with them if you just send them a friends request or a simple private message.   As soon as I started a Facebook page back in 2009 I got immediate results.  Not only was I looking for people, but imagine that.   They were looking for me too!  The first reunion was a tea I hosted for three friends and former co-workers from over thirty years ago.   I took great care in the planning and choosing of the menu, the invitation and the gifts for each gal.   I had mugs made with pictures of us on the Kankakee river, at Great America, the Ground Round, the Renaissance Faire, 4th of July picnics, all from pictures I had been taking my entire life.   Have camera, will travel.   Wow,  did I take the pictures and boy, was I glad!   Here is the table set in anticipation of our reunion.

I could not wait for the ladies to open their gifts so we could reminisce looking at our mugs and the crazy things we did in those pictures.   When the girls showed up, it was as if no years had passed between our last meetings.   That is a real friend, someone you can just pick up with where you left off so long ago.   That afternoon was very special and we have stayed in close contact since that day, vowing never to lose track of one another again.   So far we have succeeded.  But it does take work and effort and is so well worth it!

I hosted another reunion a year ago today with even more old friends and co-workers that I either found on Facebook or had always kept in touch with.   I had just been diagnosed with the big "C" and had just completed thirty-two radiation treatments and the first of six chemo treatments and was feeling very nostalgic and melancholy.   I wanted to have all my special ladies around me for a special day that would take me through the months ahead.   I wanted to make sure that no matter what happened, I had reconnected with them to enjoy them and savor the time spent with them.  I had a table set up on the front porch for our luncheon and for each ladies place card, I had a framed picture of them - a picture from long ago.   It was so much fun to watch their reaction when they saw their framed placecard.  I also had a special card at each persons place setting with copies of more pictures of them.   Pictures they had no idea I had.   I enjoyed going through all my old pictures for this project and hoped the pictures would make them as happy as they had made me.   The look on their faces as they opened the cards was priceless.   I am so thankful for cameras!   I only wish I had an I Phone back in the day.   I would have been pretty dangerous!  Here are a couple of pictures from that luncheon held just one year ago today.

I'm now in the planning stages of yet another reunion with ladies I worked with at a flower shop long ago.   We are in touch, we are determined and eager to meet for dinner, it is just a matter of getting everyone to agree on a date.   This meeting will be bittersweet as we have lost of few of our flower shop girls in recent years.   But we will toast to them and share our memories and hopefully, will stay connected in years to come.    I will most certainly post about that reunion in the near future!