Connecting Cross Country

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Friend #188: Emily (and Tyler)
Date and Location of Visit: Monday, October 24, 2011, Caribou Coffee, Chicago, IL
Known from: High school
Last seen: November 2007

High school friend Emily, along with her son Tyler, and I met up for coffee one morning in Chicago, Illinois.  Emily was the choir/musical theater equivalent to what I was in band.  I remember her playing the role of Lily in The Secret Garden and how her beautiful voice would ring out over the sounds of the orchestra where I sat.

Emily pursued music in college, one of the few from our class to do so.  But she had to stop due to vocal strain.  She wound up in Chicago when she attended Rush for speech pathology, but has landed back in a creative field.  She is a very talented photographer.  Just the day before we met, she was climbing all over train tracks in downtown Chicago for an engagement shoot–and she’s pregnant!  It’s a profession that started as a hobby and a passion, taking pictures of Tyler as he grew.  Now, she’s almost too busy, with some of her business coming from high school friends.  She did portraits for Facebook friend Jenny‘s family on a visit to St. Louis, as well as several others.  If you’re in Chicago or St. Louis and need a photographer, look her up here.  She’s running a promotion on Facebook that if you “Like” her page, you get a discount!  And thanks to the friends of mine who supported Emily as she was given the cover shot of Best Baby Photographers on Facebook!

Emily and her family, like so many on this trip, are in a season of transition.  With #2 on the way, they are thinking about some bigger-picture life/family stuff, while putting one foot in front of the other for the everyday tasks at hand.  But when it comes to thinking about pictures, big or small, Emily has a good eye, so I’m sure everything will become crystal clear.

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Friend #187: Melissa
Date and Location of Visit: Sunday, October 23, 2011, Feed, Chicago, IL
Known from: My former coworker’s sister
Last seen: 2005

Melissa is the younger sister of my coworker Lisa from my first job after college.  Lisa and I worked with girls in lock-up outside Detroit.  Melissa and I met through Lisa and shared a common love for good art, good humor, and spirituality.  Melissa and I met on my Phase 2 jaunt through Chicago at Feed, where Carly and I had met during the summer.  It was great to catch up with Melissa, who is walking through a detoxifying transition in her life.  It can be a tough job to find healthy people to be around, and Melissa is showing a lot of courage to be taking steps in that direction.  And she’s doing it with her trademark outspoken authenticity and sense of humor.

I might as well give a shout-out to Lisa, too, who I saw over the summer in Ann Arbor.  Lisa is not on Facebook.  Her husband Ryan is, but he was out of town, so I got together with Lisa and her two sons, one of whom was half asleep for this picture.  Lisa went on from our job to get a Ph.D. She now counsels children, as well as running a business with her husband called TherapyCharts.  It’s a computer-based documentation system for clinicians, designed out of Lisa’s own work and needs.  Ryan was off promoting their wares at a conference in Washington, D.C.  I was excited to get to meet the boys and see Lisa as a mom.

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Friend #186: Daniel
Date and Location of Visit: October 20-22, 2011, West Lafayette, IN
Known from: My best friend’s wedding (really!)
Last seen: 2002?

Daniel is the younger brother of my best friend’s husband.  Daniel was the groomsmen I was paired with as a bridesmaid.  When I stopped through West Lafayette, Indiana to visit my best friend and family, Daniel was in town for two weeks of shows and fairs promoting his Six Lugs Wine Sloshee.  It’s a cherry wine tart and tangy frozen drink I quite enjoyed a lot!  He was going and coming quite a bit, but we all did get to sit down and play a good game of Settlers of Qatan.

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Friend #185: Carl
Date and Location of Visit: Thursday, October 20, 2011, Naked Tchopstix Sushi, Indianapolis, IN
Known from: My brother’s friend from college marching band
Last seen: 1997ish?

Carl and my older brother, along with Shag, were good friends in the Michigan Marching Band.  Carl is an excellent trombone player who double majored in trombone performance and music education at Michigan.  I remember attending a band concert with several different groups, and there were only 1 or 2 groups out of 6 that Carl wasn’t playing in. He did a stint as a band director, and now spends his time playing latin/jazz/salsa gigs and working a day job to fill in the gaps.  Check out his website.

I was grateful to intersect with Carl when I did because he had endured a lot of hard events in his family in the few weeks prior to my visit.  I was amazed at how well he was doing given the circumstances.  And I was grateful that he entrusted some big pieces of his life to his friend’s kid sister.

Carl is 6’9″.  When the Michigan went to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego (1994?), the marching band got to make the block “M” on the deck of an aircraft carrier while a photograph was taken from a helicopter up above.  The people are tiny, but you can tell which one is Carl because his shadow is longer than anyone else’s.  And no, he doesn’t play basketball.  If you ask him that, he’ll ask if you play miniature golf.

They say the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but I don’t think that’s true with Carl.  A lesser man would have crumbled under what Carl is going through, but witnessing his level-headed perseverance taught me a thing or two about enduring hard times.  I guess he’s an educator after all.

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Friend #184: Maura
Date and Location of Visit: Thursday, October 20th, Stone Creek Dining, Indianapolis, IN
Known from: High school marching band
Last seen: 1994

Maura was a senior flute player in marching band when I was a freshman.  We had a long, leisurely lunch during which our conversation wandered in a lot of different directions, and it would have been easy to keep going.  We talked about the pain of losing parents and feeling the pull to move home, but an uncertainty about doing so.  Maura has such a sweet and pleasant demeanor that our nearly 3 hours together felt like no time had passed at all.

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Hey everyone.  Thank you for your patience as I took an un-announced and unplanned blogging hiatus.  I have been fairly stationary in southeastern Michigan for nearly two weeks now, and have had some interesting insights.

I’m rethinking the blog.  Now that I’m about 50 people behind on Phase 2 of the trip and 100 people behind from before Phase 2, it really isn’t sustainable for me to continue blogging in the capacity that I have been (or haven’t been, as the case may be).  This saddens me because I have enjoyed the opportunity to relive the visits and reflect more upon them.  I also have viewed the blog as a way to honor the people who have taken time out of their busy lives to participate in this crazy social experiment.

But really, I didn’t think about the format of the blog before I started doing it after visit #1 back on June 13th.  I have a tendency (which can tend toward strength or weakness depending on the situation) to jump into situations without thinking too much beforehand, and so I did that with the blog, and now I can’t keep up with myself.

I have reached a milestone of sorts–I have visited over 1/3 of my friends!  If I think about the number of visits or the number of miles driven, I instantaneously require a nap.  I still struggle to find a way to visit, document, and rest, but I am so encouraged and energized and grateful for the opportunity to sit down with such quality people over and over again.  I am astounded by everyone’s willingness to open up their lives to me and at the timing of my visits.  Some of the people I’m visiting are in the midst of living a lot of life and to be able to intersect with such tragedy and triumph is a gift.

On Monday I head into new territory toward the east coast.  I have definitely visited new cities on this leg of the trip, but I will now venture into the meat of Phase 2.  As opposed to Phase 1 when I drove 9 hours to see one person, the drives are shorter and there are more people in each place.  This greater density of people can create a problem for the blogging, too.  The last time I posted I went to use wifi and had about 5 hours, planning to spend the majority of it blogging.  Instead, I sent emails to the 50+ people I could visit in southeast Michigan for 4 hours and blogged for 1.  It’s a lot more coordinating and corresponding, but such is the case with the literal constantly shifting landscape that is my life’s adventure.  I arrive in Boston the Monday before Thanksgiving.  Between now and then I hit Akron, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Ottawa (Oh Canada!), Vermont, and New Hampshire–many places I have never visited!

So thank you for your patience with me as I sort out how to do this.  I will be posting about my visits, but it will probably be extremely abbreviated.  And hopefully, I will be able to post about some larger lessons I am gleaning from this experience.  In the meantime, I am pleased to report that it has not gotten too ridiculously cold for this Cali girl, and it hasn’t (really) snowed….yet.

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Friend #182: Amy
Date and Location of Visit: Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Wasabi Sushi, Town and Country, MO
Known from: Church growing up, Dance growing up, Preschool, Elementary through High school
Last seen: 2007

Many many memories. Click here.

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Friend #181: Daddy B
Date and Location of Visit: Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Home of the B’s
Known from: Parents of junior high friend Susan
Last seen: November 2009

What happened to his arm? Click here to find out.

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