i know just what you mean

Many years ago, in the mid-to-late '90s, EMc and I went to a workshop for writers.
I don't remember much about the guest speakers now, but I do recall us sitting through a lecture from Ellen Goodman and her gal pal Patricia O'Brien. The two of them had written a book together called "I Know Just What You Mean," and their lecture was a Saturday Night Live skit waiting to be written, these two smug, middle-aged white women completing each others' sentences, completely wrapped up in their own oblivious realities. EMc and I laughed like hyenas later, and would often quote Ellen or Patricia, which would cause us both to crack up again.
One thing I did take from that afternoon was something they said about friendships. Friends come in two varieties: Friends of the road and friends of the heart. It's a variation of the old saying that you can have friends for a reason, friends for a season, or friends for a lifetime.
I know, cue the Hallmark commercial, but hear me out.
I've thought about that quote a lot since I moved to the city just over a month ago. The bf and I joke that we have no friends here, nor have we made much of an effort to meet anyone. But that's not entirely true. By an odd twist of fate, three of my oldest and (once) closest friends from college have also ended up here in the center of the universe -- or at least a short train ride away.
EMc is here, though he and I never really lost touch. Sure, we don't talk as much as we used to, and he's usually too busy being the best reporter in the Western Hemisphere to hang out with me -- even though we now live three blocks apart. Still, the connection is there, and I'm convinced we'll be giggling at New Yorker cartoons until long after my eyesight has given way.
With the other two, it's more complicated. My communication with Amy had fallen off for a long while, so our times hanging out recently have been about rediscovery. She's still the same fiery bitch she always was, but age has mellowed her around the edges. At dinner the other night she had me nearly in tears with laughter. It was either her stories or the spicy Curry Chicken, but either way it was good to see her.
And then there's Neil. I'm happy to discover that he's as crazy and as creative as ever. He's actually just launched a blog and the writing is daring, disgusting, and delightful. Neil will always be a square peg in world of round holes, but he does take such visceral pleasure in fisting those holes. God love 'em.
I bring this all up now because of a fourth person who I also recently had a chance to see after a long period of silence. Not a college friend, but someone who came along shortly after and who very much changed the course of my middle 20s. We had a perfectly polite meeting the other day -- perfectly polite and perfectly forgettable. I left the restaurant half wishing I had not initiated the communication, wondering what it was I was looking for in the first place.

Maybe I'm just getting old and sentimental. I like to think there's some explanation why we circle back around and reconnect with the people we've lost touch with. Sometimes those reconnections show us that there was a reason those people once meant so much to us, and there's a reason you've landed in the same city all these years later. Sometimes they show us that the person's season has passed and it's time to pay for your coffee and just move on.