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Personal Blog of Steve Baumber
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Back from Calgary after nine days of visiting with friends and family, culminating with the marriage of a lifelong friend.
It was good to see Dad before he headed off on yet another adventure in Vietnam, and then to Laos where he has been previously. From the latest report, it would seem that he's up to his eyeballs in developing the basis for medical education in Vietnam (twenty words or less please, single-spaced). I have a feeling his treasured spot at the Villa in Vientiane is looking mighty beckoning right now...
Ian’s wedding went swimmingly. The ceremony was flawless, and the reception was poignant; a testament to two people who are much loved. I suppose every day should be a wedding reception for us all. Either we sit at the head table and take stock of the folks in our lives, or step up to the podium and offer words of encouragement and support, and tell those whom we love that they make our lives richer.
I have been immersed in reconnecting with friends that I have known since my first clear memories. Like family members they have just always been there. I don't have memories of them "arriving" or being introduced; there has always been Ian and Pete and Tayt (amidst a small cadre of others) that have been an unquestioned part of my life, as we all steadily grew up in Bragg Creek.
Really, there is very little difference between my siblings and these lads from other families that I grew up with, except that they slept in different houses and answered to different adults. The sense of coming from a “village” is strongest when I think of these friends. I was raised by their families as much as my own, and they are my brothers in every sense but blood. I think it's this similarity to family that makes our friendship so striking and so enduring even though we are separated by distance and have developed roots in other villages.
Seeing Sierra (Tayt’s daughter) at the airport, as we were waiting to return home, I thought that as we become the caretakers of our own families this tacit presence in each other’s lives extends to each other’s children. I sometimes think about my parents’ friends. More specifically the many friendships they had that I remember from my childhood, but which have now quietly disappeared. I never considered how the social richness of my parents’ lives was an important facet of my life. Their “old friends” were a way of seeing my parents as people, giving to me a history beyond my own lifetime, and were therefore as much a part of my genealogy as my blood relatives. I am saddened by the fading away of these friendships. Not only because my parents have lost these folks from their lives, but because they’re lost from my life as well. Strange n’est pas? I know that an old friendship will suffer the indignities of neglect and still remain, but this afternoon in the sunny waiting room of the Calgary International Airport I realized that the sin of neglect on an old friend might just also be visited upon the children of my friend. For me, this is one more solid reason to cherish and nurture these friendships. Thanks Sierra, and thanks to Ian for bringing old friends together again.
posted by Steve @
9:32 PM
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9.19.2004  |
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