Friends from Away

I kept Stella home from school on Monday. There were no appointments we needed to attend to, no compelling medical reason for keeping her home. I just wanted her home. 

Some very dear friends were visiting Jakarta from out of town. This family was one of the fist with whom we really connected when me moved here. We just all really got each other you know? And our girls snapped together, both wonderful and weird. 

And then, as is the cycle in this nomadic life, they had to move on. We said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. We promised to be friends across oceans and all through the years. But sometimes friendships fall away to distance and time. And I worry about that.

We are, at least for now, committed to being a nomadic family for the long term. My kids didn’t choose to live their lives unrooted and unmoored. They will have to say goodbye to many dear friends as our family continue in this wandering life. But I want them to know that friendships, uncommon friendships with people with whom you snap together weirdly and wonderful, these types of friendships expand and grow even across oceans and through the years. 

I want my kids to grow knowing that these friendships expand and flourish and help us grow. Community, however distant and wide, is precious. We build it and guard it deep in our hearts. We do what we can to protect it and watch it grow.

So. We busted out the kids from school to run around the pool deck, to dress up in gumboots and tutus and sing all the words to Let it Go, to laugh at videos we make, and have lunch beers and watermelon juice (when juice is normally verboten), and we just have the best time together.

Also, I let the kids play with this GoPro, which, incidentally, was given to me GIVEN!!! by a lovely, generous person from a Facebook group to which I belong. I posted a question about underwater camera housings, and she just offered to send me this camera which her family did not use any more. Her only instruction was to pay it forward. And isn’t that a beautiful example of community and kindness and generosity? 

Well, we all played with this camera, we had so much fun, some really big laughs, and some beautiful moments with people so dear to us. 

You know, I really do feel so lucky to be touched by community and kindness and goodness.