It Can Happen: Reuniting Without Clicks Or Likes, Just Good Timing And Coffee

My son was recently admitted to his first-choice university. Within minutes of sharing this exciting news to his Facebook page, my phone lit up with congratulatory messages from friends who heard the good news from their kids. Barely an hour later, my son had amassed more than 300 likes and comments on his announcement. I remarked how nice it was that his peers were supportive and wished him well. He replied, “This is what we do, Mom.” It got me thinking about the amount of people-collecting that occurs on Facebook.

If you’re under thirty, there’s a good chance you’ve already acquired hundreds of Facebook friends. Friending your peers from high school, college and work, makes it possible to claim a thousand or more people as friends. For me, my comparatively small number of friends comes down to quality over quantity; a notion that doesn’t seem to resonate with the younger crowd.

Recently, I attended a bat mitzvah party of a neighbor’s daughter. Since our kids are different ages, I didn’t expect to know anyone other than my neighbors. Although these types of social situations tend to stress me out, because I’m not particularly outgoing, I dug deep that evening, because I wanted to enjoy it. After all, I didn’t have my kids there, so I felt free to do the Cha Cha Slide and Cupid Shuffle without judgment or fear of embarrassing them. However, I couldn’t make the same promise to the other tweens in attendance I knew personally.

At the end of the night, as I was getting my coat, I turned around, and there, to my amazement, stood my “big sister” from my college sorority. I stood, mouth agape, unable to find any words. She looked at me with knowing eyes and answered the question I was unable to ask, with a simple, “Yes.” A big hug ensued. In the eighties, before social media and likes and clicks and swipes, there was no guarantee of holding on to every person you ever knew. While we were both on Facebook, our last names had changed, like so many others, making it difficult to find each other. Admittedly, I have never been a Facebook aficionado. It’s always felt weird to friend people I have not seen in years. I took part in the ritual when I first joined, but now that the novelty of Facebook has worn off, the friending frenzy has dissipated. Now that Facebook is an integrated part of our social structure, there are unspoken rules and accepted forms of interaction one must follow -- to be cool about the whole thing.

I picked my jaw up off the floor and tried to gather myself after the initial shock of recognition. We chatted a bit, and without thinking, my brain flashed back to freshman year at the University of Wisconsin. When I reminisce with my husband and friends about my college experience, I block out my freshman year. During a year that was filled with anxieties, the only positive memory I have was my friendship with this sorority sister. She was exactly what I needed at that time. She was warm and fun and looked out for me, when I was an overwhelmed freshman trying to navigate college life.

There was no reason we did not maintain the friendship. There was no falling out, no drama. We just lost touch.

Had there been Facebook in 1987, I’m sure I would still be “friends” with many people I knew then, whether I truly cared about them or not. The social contract of our new technology-driven connections demands that we friend anyone and everyone we meet. But lucky for me, those high school and college days were decades away by the time Facebook came around, and I never felt the compulsion to seek out every person I knew. I could be choosey. My sorority sister was the only person from my college days who I actually searched for. Ironically, we have lived about one mile away from each for the past sixteen years and didn't know it. Here she was, in the flesh, for the first time after thirty years, and she had been around the corner from me for more than half of that time.

It got me thinking, if we had been Facebook friends over the years and subsequently ran into each other, would I have dared to rekindle our friendship?

If we were Facebook friends, her whereabouts would not have been a mystery. If I wanted to get in touch with her, I would have had the opportunity. But we were not. It had been many years since we had spoken; there were so many unknowns. I felt self-conscious about putting myself out there and asking her to meet up. My inner 18-year-old did a happy dance, but my outer 48-year-old worried if she felt the same way. I wondered if we would run out of things to say or if our connection would still be there after thirty years.

I stopped the internal sparring with myself and took a chance.

A few days later, I decided to ask my neighbor, who hosted the bat mitzvah, for my old friend’s number. She happily obliged, mentioning how delighted my friend was to bump into me that night. Armed with this information, I found the confidence to text her.

We set a date and met for coffee. Despite the decades between us and my cockamamie concerns that we would have nothing to talk about, we chatted for hours. When thinking about her over the years, I always wanted to thank her for taking on the “big sister” role when I needed an older, wiser person in my life. I’m a big fan of acknowledging gratitude. Although I avoid reflecting on my freshman year for the most part, I remain tremendously thankful for her and all that she did for me during that difficult time. Expressing my appreciation face-to-face during our coffee date felt more powerful than any happy birthday post I could have written on her Facebook wall.

Memories are a wonderful base to awaken an old friendship. As we were reminiscing, she told me she hadn’t been to Madison, Wisconsin since graduation. As I was thinking about how we forge this new path in our old friendship, I realized Madison is exactly where we need to go. It is where it all started for us, the scene of the crime, so to speak, and perhaps, the place where our old friendship could become new again. If nothing else, it’s a gorgeous campus and has the best ice cream in the country.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe there are better ways to connect with old friends than liking and commenting on Facebook posts. As easy as technology makes surface-level connections, it can never replace the value of interpersonal relationships that take place outside our computers. While our future is still unknown, I hope she becomes as dear to me now as she once was.

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Ilyse lives in Chicago with her husband, two kids and three dogs. She rides a bike, chases her dogs, reads a lot of books and writes about parenting, wellness, technology and politics.