When the Past Becomes Present.

I spent more than two and a half hours last night talking to the Runner. I hadn’t had a real conversation with him for nearly twenty years but he sent me a Christmas Card and I thought Hmm - in guy speak (a language in which I am fluent) a Christmas card after never getting one before is an invitation to be closer friends. So I called him a few days ago to say thank you and he called me back last night. It was a lovely conversation, sometimes quite hard in spots, and yet surprisingly easy all in all. A kind of trust there that you can’t buy and a sweet nostalgic tenderness that you can’t fake.

You’ll laugh when I tell you that he hadn’t read this blog and therefore had no idea that I just wrote about him a few days ago. Serendipity? I talk about him out loud for the first time in years and then the card and the call? I was even brave enough to read the bit I wrote about him over the phone. Hey? Look it me and my courage, eh?

Not that we hadn’t seen each other, we are sort of related so always on each other’s radar a bit. We’ve seen each other about once a year or so at some family thing and said the hey, how are ya’s. But all very superficial kinda stuff. This conversation was very different. It was the who have you turned into conversation and where are we really going anyway with our lives conversation.

We talked up and down the last twenty years and pretty much each and every family member thru triumph and tragedy. We talked a lot about family and who we thought we were. We talked about Mastery – me of the word and him of the flesh. He is one of those people that has maintained a high level of fitness his whole life long which is the envy of all who know him, including me. We talked too much about my younger sister, which made me a bit jealous, and about neither of us having kids, which made us both a bit sad.

In summary we talked about love. The family kind and the friend kind and the marital kind and the self kind and the of life kind. It was a good conversation. I hope we have another one soon.