Don’t get
me wrong, I have great friends in Sweden too. These friends have stood by my
side since High School, a few even before then. They have patiently remained
friends with me although I used to vanish for the majority of the year and
dropped back in Laholm during the summertime and around Christmas. Back in the day,
emails were around, but smart phones were not. We stayed in touch, but not on a
daily basis. It was more of an email here and there. Sending pictures was not
a common event. I truly value my Swedish friends, but most of my best friends
are not in the Northern Kingdom. I am overjoyed to have so
many caring and interesting international friends. At times it may sound like I
am bragging: “Yeah my friend in Saudi Arabia told me that yesterday when we
Skyped” or “my friend in Korea sent me the sweetest package the other day.” But
that is the truth. Some of my very best friends are thousands of miles away. We
were brought up in very different countries and cultures and yet, when we met
(most of us met in St. Louis, USA) we bonded. We looked past our differences
and even cherished them because we learned so much from each other. Our shared
mealtimes were usually a smörgåsbord of dishes from all over the world. Now we
have to make more of an effort to stay close. Thank goodness for today’s technology!
And some friends you don’t have to speak to every day or even every week or
month. You know the friendship still stands. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a
vibe. I am pretty sure you know what I mean.
I have been
fortunate to have had the means and time to visit friends in their home
countries over the years. A short trip here, a longer one there. It makes me
happy to know I have people all over the world I can visit. I have said it
before, but I will say it again: To be invited into someone’s home and be
allowed to tag along with them to their workplace/grocery store/friend’s house
is priceless to me. Absolutely priceless! I am so very, very grateful for the
opportunities I have been given. But having my best friends so far away also
makes me incredibly sad at times. I want to call them up and go for a coffee. I
want to hug them on a regular basis. I love hugging so this is huge for me!
When I first decided to go to the US and be an au pair (nanny) and I found out I was
going to care for 9 year old triplets, one of the questions I asked myself:
“Will they think it’s un-cool to hug me?” Because I need hugs in my life. I am
basically the snowman Olaf from the Disney movie “Frozen”: “Hi, I am Olaf and I
like warm hugs.” For the record, my triplets have always showered me with hugs;
from the moment we met, until now, when they are 22. I just need to physically
be in the same room as them. And that’s the thing; I want to have all my loved
ones around me. I want to have a dinner with all my friends present. But I
can’t have all my best friends gathered in one room. Well, not easily I can’t. I do dream about the day I will get married. Okay,
not like I am planning my wedding now, picking out the color of napkins and
trying on a billion wedding dresses…we all know that is not happening anytime
soon. But my dream is to have a huge party with all my best friends in one
place. That will take some planning, effort, time and money from all of us. I
see a big occasion, such as a wedding, as one life event where I could perhaps
gather my peeps! Or actually, it does not have to be a huge event like a
wedding. If people are willing and able, a meeting can occur without a reason.
Just because. My best friends and I are basically all travelers. But as people
part ways, it’s not that we don’t want to stay close, it’s just that life
happens. We all get busy. You don’t have to have studied or lived on another continent,
like I did, to experience this. I bet people that studied in the south of
Sweden and return back home to the north may feel the same. Distance. It’s
rather easy to stay close when you are all living on a college campus (which I
never did though) or at least close to each other. You attend the same classes
and social events. My last year in the US I had some of my best friends living in the
same apartment complex, right across the hall from me. It was a very special
time indeed. On a regular basis, there was a knock on the door or I received a
text message asking: “Are you home?”...If I was, I replied “yes”, went and got
the door wide open for my neighbor to walk in. We borrowed kitchenware and
stored furniture and other items in each other’s homes. I think we even co-owned some stuff such as a wine opener, a vital piece of equipment. Going
clubbing was easy as we always took turns on driving and most of the time we arrived
safely back home together at sunrise. Oh sweet, sweet memory lane!
I have always, from a very young age, loved watching the news. And now it means even more to me. If I hear about riots in my beloved St. Louis, I feel an ever bigger need to keep myself updated on what’s going on in this Midwestern city that I called home for so many years. If a forest fire is raging in Australia, I want to check in with my friends there and make sure they are okay. And although the news most of the time is fairly grim and negative, sometimes there are happy moments too. When the German soccer team won the World Cup in 2014, I fondly thought of my German friends and sent them congratulations. Messages also went out to my dear Argentinean friends who unfortunately lost to Germany, but snagged a very impressive second place.
I don’t want to miss out on life in my immediate surroundings. I don’t want to be the girl with her face stuck in an iPhone when out with friends having a good time. And I don’t want to be obnoxious about uploading stuff on Facebook or Instagram. But I want to see pictures from my friends. I love that a simple click on the “like” icon can tell a friend in Scotland that I saw her pic, I acknowledge it and perhaps that “like” click can convey some love via the internet.
It’s not
that you cannot have friends all over the world and still have friends in your
immediate surroundings. Of course you can. And I love that I can still be in
contact, via modern technology, with friends all over. I just want to be mindful
where I am. Stop and smell the roses. I want to experience things in high definition…IRL (In Real Life). I am looking forward to meeting new groups of friends in Malmö. Because
as life goes on, our situations change, we get older and have different
experiences and priorities in life. But speaking of roses, I also want to be
able to send a digital image of roses to a friend in another part of the world saying
I am thinking of him or her. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp…so many
ways to stay in touch and share glimpses of each other’s everyday life. I am so
thankful for the people I have met during my time on the road. My life is
better because of you all. It’s just that my heart at times gets heavy with
sorrow that I can’t see my best friends when I want to. I mean, I can SEE them
(thank goodness for Skype!) but the hugging part, it’s trickier. I know some
people have a harder time to deal with distance than others and may sever bonds
of friendships when two people leave to live at opposites sides of the world. I
am thankful most of my friends, and myself included, don’t see distance as an
end to a friendship. The world is rather small and one can go anywhere in
matter of hours. Having a flight attendant as a sister is a great reminder of
this. I love that she casually asks before leaving for Shanghai: “Is there
anything you want from China?” She grabs her bags and says: “See you in two
days!” Great reminder indeed that the world is our oyster. And if the world is
our oyster, I sure have found some real pearls inside those gleaming shells.
Thank you to all my pearls out there, I truly value each and every one of you. I look forward to hugging you again.
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