There has been a lot of getting together in new ways lately.
There have been a flurry of phone calls and interesting ways of connecting. I have played trivia with my trivia group on facetime. I have had theatre friends make regular contact. I have received a group email from old school friends, barely seen but never forgotten.
It is the upside to this different world.
And so it should have been no surprise to me to find a goldfield of common interest from a total stranger.
The woman rang me recently out of the blue. I'm not sure how she had my phone number and can only surmise I was put down as that second contact by my parents.
The woman is in my parents' Probus club and she wanted to know if my parents were going to re-join this year. At age 91 and 96, it had been a while since they had gone to a meeting or outing and they can probably no longer negotiate the steps for a bus or car trip for a meeting.
It should have been a short conversation, but for reasons unknown she mentioned some of her family members.
It turns out that we have much in common. Her sister for example is married to my former editor (ie from the late 1970s). I asked for his number and we had our own catch up. Roger Plastow used to write his own column Skinhead in what was then the Redland Times and he tells me he has taken this column to another masthead. We had a great deal to catch up on.
My new Probus friend and now former stranger then tells me that her daughter is married to the brother of an old friend of mine from primary school. It's a bit of a stretch, but I remember my friend's brother and in fact her whole family quite well.
My primary school friend and I were at confirmation classes in Year 7 when news came that her father had died. You don't forget those things. Her father Dr Parker Bottomley was among those pioneers of Redland Clinic at Cleveland so there was a second local link as well.
And so I have connected with my old friends, my current friends and some blasts from the past. These are the connections we should all be making as we wait, separate but all together.
- Linda Muller
