There have been many wonderful people that have come and gone in my life and the number one cause of loss of friendship has always been distance. You move away and start a different life that no longer includes the ones you left behind. Your new inside jokes leave old friends on the outside. Your existence revolves around a completely different set of events and locations, with completely different combinations of people playing completely different roles in the scenes of your daily life. It's not that you forget your old friends. It's simply that they no longer occupy the same physical and/or mental space that they did before.
Of course we make a concerted effort to stay close to those we love the most, regardless of how many miles and time zones separate us. Even with all the modern convenience of social networks, video chat and email, though, sometimes it's just not enough. Friendships fade and this is the way of things.
Living abroad has taught me a lot about long distance relationships and the most noteworthy lesson has to be about my relationship with my dad.
I was always a bit of a daddy's girl. I liked sports and dirt and I was not interested in sitting in the house all day while my brothers were outside having adventures. My dad never made me feel like I couldn't or shouldn't do something just because I was a girl. I had the exact same opportunities my brothers had, not because my dad was ultra-progressive but because it never crossed his mind to treat us any differently. My dad was my hero and the coolest guy I knew for a long time.
Somewhere around the time when I started noticing that other guys were pretty cool, too, things started to unravel. I was a typical teenage girl and my dad was not fully equipped with the emotional skills needed to deal with it. (But then again, who really is??) Even though we lived under the same roof and ate dinner together every day, the mental space between us was growing steadily and showed no sign of stopping.
When I left for college, the rift got even bigger. I was so busy making new friends that I didn't have time to nurture our already fragile relationship. My mom was pretty tech savvy and we emailed often but I hardly talked to me dad unless I was home, which wasn't very frequently. When I turned 21 and could go out to bars with him, things improved slightly, but again, I was so caught up in myself and my new life as an "adult" that I wasn't too concerned with what was going on in his life.
Baltimore brought even more challenges. Visits were less frequent, phone calls were always cut short and limited to small talk, as if I had some word quota to fill but substance didn't count. My dad and I have never had super deep talks but in those days, conversations were limited to the weather and baseball. We didn't know each other anymore and it didn't seem like either of us was particularly motivated to do anything about it. Not for any reason in particular. It was just the way of things. He had become that guy I knew when I was a kid but outgrew years ago.
I expected more of the same as Jason and I moved across an ocean to start a new life as a married couple. It seemed like my dad and I would be the equivalent of passing acquaintances forever. Yet somehow, it has been exactly the opposite. I have had more real conversations with my father since moving to Bordeaux than we had in the previous 10 years combined. We talk about sports and beer Carlos and the future. We talk about his job, and his parents, and what it's like to be a grandfather and how his life is different now that all of his children are grown up and really on their own. We just talk. Distance, the thing that is normally such a relationship killer, has ironically been the very thing that has brought my dad and I back together. For the first time in years, I feel like we get each other and there's no greater feeling in the world.
My dad is my hero and he's the coolest guy I know.
Happy birthday, Dad.
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