In praise of lost items, lost time, and found friends

Your brain resets itself, creates new neural pathways when you do the work of healing.

Dear Reader:

When I began writing this post, my brain was resetting itself after several days of low-grade fever, post-nasal drip, and the kind of cough that rattles chest, cranium, and cupboards. [Now it’s back on duty, but in slow gear.] Too tired to keep my eyes open last week, I opted for audio-book entertainment: fifty chapters of my bookclub’s latest pick. In My Friends, Fredric Backman’s novel, story lines and characters appear and reappear in scenes across a twenty-five-year chasm. I fell asleep for hours at a time, replayed whole chapters, and skipped a great deal before arriving at the last stop, a happy-enough ending to ensure that some art, friendships, and stories survive to see another day. If you don’t know Backman, look him up… find him on Jimmy Fallon if nowhere else. He’s delightfully droll.

Reunion - 1

One of Backman’s themes, i.e., the tenacity of teen frienship, was already on my mind, as I’d just returned from my 50-year high school class reunion in California. Those events are predictably bittersweet, especially the memorial table draped in school colors to display portraits, candles, and flowers next to the list of classmates no longer living—what beautiful faces, hopeful smiles. What lives cut short—some by decades. And the classmate standing next to you who says, “I came tonight because they couldn’t.” Even though it’s been half a century (!) since graduation, I kept thinking, “but we’re still too young to have lost so many.”

What do we look for at these events? What compels us to get on a plane two states away or drive for eight hours to see old friends and acquaintences, to talk to strangers with whom we shared over half our childhood? Is it more than satisfying curiosity? Are we measuring ourselves and others against some invisible, and likely outdated, standard? Asserting some sort of territorial claim? What does it mean to remember long-forgotten classmates and to be remembered by them?

Introversion is my default mode, my comfort zone. At reunions (as I had in almost every classroom as a student), I hang back, observe, look for the one-to-one opportunities for conversations, connections. As more time passes between meet-ups, the less there is to say, except to those with whom I’ve made an effort to keep in contact across the many years and miles that separate us. Still, there’s a spark of recognition behind once familiar eyes—that tiny glint of shared experience, electrons bouncing off the walls of distant memory: games of hopscotch, stingray bicycle races, candy-sale fundraising, ditching class. A mutual validation of existence, an affirmation of importance. Our lives mattered then, matter now, whether or not we live them in close proximity or share the same beliefs.

I don’t know if I’ll attend another official gathering of my high school class—this one felt like an appropriate conclusion to a long era—but I’m glad I went. Maybe you will be, too.

Reunion - 2

I flew into and out of the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for the reunion and realized during my brief stay that a fellow writer from the Prague Summer Program lives in west L.A. On a whim, I emailed him to ask if he had time to meet before my flight. Short story: He picked me up at the Alamo rental car center and we went to breakfast at The Serving Spoon for soul food—amazing food,* conversation, connection—a soulful reunion of two writers. And a reminder: When you find your people, cherish them and nurture the relationships. Don’t lose them.

Reunion - 3

Did you see the red suitcase at the top of the post? That’s the bag I lost on the London Underground back in May 2025. In it were hearing aids, prescription drugs, power chords for my computer and phone, and a bag of dried prunes, among other things.

Needless to say, I was bummed (but I still had my watercolor paints).

But the lost suitcase led to finding a friend that same day in the hotel lobby as Dr. Science (my life-and-travel companion, whom you’ve met here before) and I stood rather forlorn looking. Enter singer-songwriter-musician James Kirby who says, “Are you all right?” And a friendship was born.

So that is why, four months after meeting James, I filled my shopping cart with drinks and snacks to serve at James Kirby’s Albuqeurque debut—a one-night-only house concert stop on his U.S. Tour to promote his new album, Breathe. James and I cooked up this mini-reunion when he realized his agent had booked him in Texas and Colorado, totally bypassing the best of the Southwest: New Mexico! Twenty people filled my friend Heidi’s living room for a beautiful evening of music, stories, and connections. Several of our friends were meeting each other for the first time, yet among the guests were also some sweet reunions.

Retreat

Since then, I have retreated into coughing fits and writing sprints as I revise and edit my memoir every day to get it to an editor by my self-imposed deadline of, oops, yesterday.

Until next,

Andi