Reconnecting Relationships
This year marks 45 years since I graduated high school. I began my studies in a small Iowa community, and if my parents had waited one more year, I would have graduated there with a class of 84 students. However, we moved the August of my senior year, and that year, more than 600 took part in graduation in the town to where we relocated. I knew about 10 students.
Recently, I visited my hometown in Iowa and reconnected with several of those 80+ people. Lunches, dinners, coffee gatherings, and drive-arounds brought laughter, smiles, joy, and deeper relationships. I'm grateful and blessed to have first reconnected with them via Facebook several years ago, and then most recently, in-person. The weather was delightful so we could spend time on the patio of restaurants and catch up. Oh, how life has changed for all of us since 1978!
Sadly, several from that graduating class have passed on. More than 10 years ago, I shared a booksigning with two other women from our school days. How wonderful to share a love for writing and reading with them and to spend time together at that bookstore. One of those women is one of the classmates who passed away. I will always treasure the bit of time we shared in 2012.
I had a booksigning at that same local independent bookstore, and each person with whom I shared a meal or a coffee came to the signing. Everyone bought at least one book. I'm so grateful for their support! Jeremiah was a hit as the mascot for my romance books.
I visited the gravesites of my maternal grandparents. As I reflected upon their kindness, love, encouragement, and support, tears came to my eyes. I remembered holidays and birthdays, meals and mowing and other chores as well as shopping adventures as a family. I drove by the house they lived in during my childhood years and the one I lived in during my early school years. So many memories!
Later, before leaving the area, my husband, who attended a conference in Missouri, and I reconnected with one of his former high school classmates as well as his sister and brother-in-law. Those shared moments were also delightful.
As one ages, I think relationships become even more special. We treasure those we know/knew on a deeper level.
Most of my books are relationship-oriented, romantic and otherwise. In my Pet Rescue Romance – Yellowstone Country series, for example, readers meet the female protagonist’s family members, including a sister and a niece as well as friends. In other books, such as Love Takes Fight, readers come to know the primary female characters’ parents and cousin and later, her son. Friendships are part of both characters’ lives in nearly all of my books. Therefore, if you enjoy romance stories that weave in friendships from both sides, you’ll find such sagas in my books.
As I reconnected with people from my past, I counted many blessings that weekend. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity to be with people I knew 50 years or more ago.
I encourage all of us to reconnect in some way with those who have been part of our lives. Relationships and reconnections are good for the soul ... even decades later.
