In the van today, Ben asked if Julian would be coming to our PD Palooza party this year.  I said yes (RIGHT?) and he asked where Julian lives.  I told him that usually he lives in Charlottesville, but for the past year, he’s lived in France.  Ben said he didn’t know you could live someplace for just a year (my mom is laughing right now).  So I told him about how, when I was a lass, we moved every year, sometimes twice a year.  At the time, it seemed utterly normal of course, because that’s just what we did.  But now I tell that story and people either say “Was your dad in the military?” or “Were you on the lam?”  Nothing so glamorous, he worked for KMart, which apparently was founded on hobo principals.  Don’t let your roots grow, man.

Anyway, I gave Ben the list of places we’d moved  from my birth to our settling down when I was 10 (MA, NJ, KY, different KY, IN, OH, different OH, MI, DE, different DE).  He said, “Wow, by the end you must have had friends all over the place!”

“No, I just made new ones at each place.”

“Well, at least by the time you got to Delaware, you had email so you could write them.”

“Um, no.  There was no email, just mail.”

“Did you write to the friends you’d left?”

“…no….I just…left.”  Until that moment, it never even occured to me that it might have been normal to stay in touch.  When I was about to graduate high school and go to college, I intended to keep in contact with a couple of close friends (and did…mostly), but I never really intended to keep the HS boyfriend.  He was so hurt that I sort of pretended, but Dude, I’m moving!  You’re done.  I’m going to make new friends now.  And really?  SO much easier.  Long term friend maintenence is hard for me.  I forget to write or call.  I still think of you!  I do!  And if you called or wrote, I’d be over the moon!  And I might even write back.  But not for long.  I’ll have dreams where I see old friends and it’s so great, and I’m sad when I awaken and it isn’t real. But real life moves.  It makes new friends.  I think maybe I should have gone to girl scout camp.