Ellipses Are the Sign Of an Unstable Mind

[mallorys_camera]

Max dashes me the little admonitory note: you are starting to hit the facebook aweful hard.

I immediately bristled, got defensive. But I suppose it's true.

Thing about Facebook is that all sorts of old friends have surfaced on it; people I loved but who for one reason or another had bobbed away from me on that cold, dark Northern sea, survivors in a different lifeboat.

For example: three days ago who should I get a note from but Terri Gordon. TERRI GORDON! My best friend from Hunter College High School. Whom I hadn't heard from in forty-three years. But whom I think about – well, not every day. But often.

I was bereft when you moved, she wrote. Reading that, tears filled my eyes. I think of myself as so… disposable. I could die tomorrow. Scratch that "die" – melodramatic. Disappear then. Who in my present tense would even notice? My sons, yes. Annie, sure, why not? Ben because it would be a practical inconvenience. Who else? I fantasize a conversation between my two best friends: Marybeth – ever the pragmatic – telling Susan, "She had too much stacked against her, poor Patty. Nobody ever loved her the way the way she deserved." (Back to bathos – why not plan the funeral?) But Terri Gordon nearly half a century after the fact would hear that I'd gone and once again feel... bereft.

In so many ways being snatched away from New York City was the defining experience of my life.

Took me a long, long time to understand the damage that did to me. Not sure I'll ever be able to undo the damage in this lifetime.

I dug up an old photo. On the back Terri'd written: A characteristic pose – bangs too long, cheeks puffed, hair pulled back in desperation, smile [indecipherable] – but aside from that... ! Don't I look like Napoleon?

She lives in Chicago now. She's an architect. She was in Grant Park on Election Night. She posted a bunch of photographs of the night – there she is beaming arm and arm with her husband, the Obamas marionettes just behind her (both her children worked for the campaign so the parents got VIP seats.) The odd thing? She looks just the same…

Lots of other people on Facebook too. Ty, now a movie critic for the Boston Globe. My feisty, beloved Hala working for Nielsen but getting her kicks as a volunteer firefighter. Stephen, still at People. Ann, my Egypt travel companion, now a world famous authority on HIV. Noah, a bigwig at Gawker. Mark whose brother was my off-again, on-again for over a decade, in Nova Scotia of all places. Gordon, my New Line Cinema godfather. April, my Policy School BFF. Robert, husband of my beloved Lisa. Marlene from Breakpoint. Even Alana, my first cousin once removed, David's college-aged daughter, looking in her goofy, narcissistic photo spreads heartbreakingly like my grandfather. Not a great look for an 18 year old, I'm afraid.

I want everyone I love to get on Facebook!

Then it dawned on me that thanks to Facebook, losing touch with any one you love is now a thing of the past. Max's generation will never understand how such a thing could happen!

Of course they never understand so much already, don't they?