My Very First Friend

Hubby and I arrived via the red-eye this morning from our little trek to San Francisco. We had been invited to a wedding and decided that we might was well turn it into a mini-vacation while we were there.

The wedding was that of my very first friend. We were playmates from when we were about two or three years old, as our families had moved to the same neighborhood at around the same time. We were inseparable! Our families were close as well and we went on vacations together a couple of times. We spent a lot of after-school hours and summers together playing indoor and outdoor games (patintero, taguan (hide-n-seek), chato, agawan-base), yakking, role-playing, doing things that ranged from the silly to the gross. Then when we were ten, our friendship, as we knew it, ended abruptly when her family moved away from the Philippines for good. Both of us were left in the dark about the move until after the fact. It left a deep disappointment in both our hearts that we never got to properly say goodbye. We remained quite close through letters until we were about fourteen. By then, I imagine that teenage life took over and left us both with no time to write. We lost touch. I had often wondered about her through the years but I had lost her address and I had moved. When the internet era dawned, I tried to search for her periodically but it never turned up anything solid. Around November 2003, it hit me that I should be looking her father up instead of her as there was no way that he would change his name. Besides, I thought that he was probably the sort of person who would be listed in the phone book. So I hit the anywho.com website and voila, there was the number. I made that phone call and it started a chain reaction that led me to my long lost friend. We practically picked up from where we left off and started talking almost every day online. We caught up on how our lives went from when we last saw each other, to sharing everything that was taking place in the present, including her engagement five months later, to the planning of the details of her wedding and honeymoon. It culminated in our physical reunion last Saturday, a little over a year after we started talking and twenty-five years after we last saw each other. My first sight was of her walking down the aisle with her dad, in all her bridal glory. Her face is as pretty as I remembered but gone was the little, scrawny body I knew. She filled her gorgeous gown beautifully and was every bit the picture of a radiant bride. Our tearful reunion came later on when she was done with all the formalities of the wedding ceremony, and we were in the less structured atmosphere of the wedding reception. Her hubby and mine hit it off as well, although they had heard of each other before, as my friend and I constantly exchanged stories and photos in the year that we were doing catch up. The wedding was beautiful and we had the greatest time. It was made even more memorable because of our special circumstances. We even got the chance to squeeze in a dinner with them before they hied off to their honeymoon in the Philippines and Japan.

To Vic and Dan, the very best wishes from M and I for an incredible honeymoon and a long life together of unending blessings.

More later on the rest of the vacation...stay tuned!