

It packed a real wallop for me, and I hope I remember to “just check in” with friends in the future. It struck me as such a simple way for her to tell me that we were present in her mind and heart, and she took that moment to let me know. She was “just checking in.” No response necessary. (That would have been too much information.) She wasn’t asking me to detail our current issues. She wasn’t offering to do anything grand for us. Those words, and only those words, came in an email from a friend I don’t see often but who knows that things have, in recent weeks, been a little rough around the edges for our whole family.

It’s that other, newer, more urgent things get in the way, demanding attention. It’s not that we forget our friends, or that they’ve forgotten us. Everybody’s got stuff, and time marches on. They’ve already responded generously and appropriately to the crisis du jour and don’t feel an urge to do it again. Friends and family give us those blank looks, as if to say, “Not again, please. Making humming noises to be sure we don’t forget it.īut at some point our personal issues lose value as conversation pieces. We deal with it, but it’s always there, in the background.

It becomes part of our lives but not necessarily a welcome part. Probably not intended as that, but I’m adopting it as such anyway.Īt this point in life, we’ve all had stuff come our way, stuff that we could have done nicely without. “It’s a girl (or boy)” packs a mighty wallop. Sometimes it doesn’t take more than three little words to convey an important message.
