Like two sisters
Met J last night. Between the nibbles at her fruit salad and sips of green tea she managed to tell me a weird story encompassing her distant past and present. She was about 15 when she met a girl of her own age at a summer camp. They sort of hit it off and the two-week long episode of mutual teenage fascination continued in letters for about a year or so before it naturally ended.
Quite recently J got a series of persistent phone calls from a woman who asked her to meet, claiming they had met at that summer camp. Reluctantly, J agreed and they met, only to start an unexpected and somewhat uncomfortable reunion of two middle-aged women. A few more talks and letters followed. The misty figure of her teenage peer, now living thousands of miles away, a wife, mother and photographer, told J why she had decided to trace her, almost thirty years after that summer. It had taken her some three years to find out about J’s whereabouts, via Internet and a network of other people. Most of what she had to say was about the urge to share her reflections on how befriending J had influenced her entire life. J remembered her as a strikingly beautiful girl, sadly though, very unhappy, born to a poor, dysfunctional family, with a psychotic mother and alcoholic father. For that tormented teenage girl J became a momentary soul mate and a pivotal figure for the rest of her life.
As they were delving deeper and deeper into the past, J started to realise she was learning something important about herself and the invisible spiritual ties that bind people for all their lives. Suddenly her own present pursuits mattered less and her inner self gained more importance.
Sounds like a soap episode, but it’s too good a story to be one.