Bruce Perry says that some of our most important thoughts come in places like the shower or on the treadmill. As an old blogger friend would say: fuse out noise and then focus. Well, as I was in the shower today I thought about all the fun we have been having down at Amba's place recently. And then my childhood playmate, Mimi, came to mind associatively.
Miriam, as she hated to be called, was my neighborhood friend. I remember us as precocious little girls. We did not play with dolls like other little girls in the fifties. No sirree. We played "notes!"
When we were nine and ten years old Mimi would come over to my house. It would take a few moments of checking in, boredom, and decision making and then we would look at each other and say, "Let's play notes."
We had a little box (I think it might have been a matchbox) tied together with two very long pieces of string in a type of pulley system. The strings were long enough to reach from upstairs in my house right the way down and round to a small closet under the stairs. Each armed with pieces of paper, which we prepared ahead of time, we would station ourselves at our posts. Mimi upstairs and me down under in the closet. I would write a note, tug on the string and she would pull it up to the top of the stairs. Then I would wait while she replied. We wrote our notes back and forth for what seemed like hours. Scribing about everything we could think of often I could hear her giggling up there at the top of the stairs after receiving one of my replies. I loved that game when I was a child. I loved the secrecy of sitting under the stairs knowing that a note would soon come tumbling down in the little box in reply to something I had said or asked. I adored the tension as I waited for her response, an acknowledgment of something I shared.
It reminds me of bloggers. Some of us show our photographs and some do not. Even so, we remain a mystery to one another. Sitting in our different little "closets under the stairs." I think about what it might be like to meet up as a group over drinks or coffee or tea. Would it take away from the tension of waiting for responses, acknowledgment or the feeling of something left unknown, unsaid about the other? Such a different, detached, mysterious sort of intimacy, hearing and seeing our "voices" muffled in cyberspace.
Mimi and I have gone our separate ways. I have not seen her for over twenty five years. When I think back to those childhood days I guess we were child bloggers.
What a great kids' game and excellent analogy to blogging.
The friends we make on the internet (in varieties of ways) are, I believe, a new kind of friendship. Amazing intimacies are sometimes exchanged as email friendships develop and we can come to know each other as well as some "in person" friends.
Meeting face-to-face is a fraught proposition sometimes. I met one online friend and although we had a lovely time over a meal, our online contact has fallen off (from both ends) and something has been lost, though I'm hard pressed to figure out what changed.
Other times, it has solidified and deepened what started as online exchanges.
It's a new phenomenon that I'm sure sociologists, if they haven't begun yet, will have much to say about.
Posted by: Ronni Bennett | February 23, 2005 at 12:11 PM
Tamar: One of the great things about blogs is the people you discover -- and rediscover!, as Ronni points out. Some of the richest relationships could be those that were born in person, and revived via the Internet.
Any chance you could look her up online?
Posted by: David | February 23, 2005 at 01:34 PM
Ronni,
I really am intrigued about this blogging phenomenon. Lately I have been thinking that I would love to change careers and join the sociologists in exploring it more in-depth. Just as you are doing about getting older.
David, good idea but nope - she doesn't show up!
Posted by: Tamar | February 23, 2005 at 03:24 PM
Michal,
Your English is fine. Your comments brought tears to my eyes about how our childhoods affect us, our resilience, and we survive with strength and courage - as you have done. It is interesting for me to hear how you see your mom and her sisters, your aunts. Of course, I cannot imagine you being 40 but there you are! Am so glad you are on board, bearing witness and sharing too.
Posted by: Tamar | February 23, 2005 at 06:09 PM
Tamar, you were right again. Your post about the little girls game is indeed a close parallel, a corollary, of blogging and my post on the subject. Thank you so much for the link, and more importantly, for your continuing inspiration.
Posted by: Winston | May 30, 2005 at 01:17 PM
Winston, am so glad it connected!
Posted by: Tamar | May 30, 2005 at 08:28 PM