My new Spanish friend

There are people who record and share a few life events and others who register everything they’ve ever done and pour it out by the bucket to the entire world. Although blogging pushes me closer to the bucket brigade, most of the time life events — birthdays and anniversaries for example — come and go without my noticing.

Recently, I read a news article about couples who provided their wedding guests with a hashtag they could use during the ceremony to post on Facebook, upload photos to Instagram, and tweet. The article said that often the guests missed much of the event because they were busy checking for likes on their postings.

My problem is that I might want to share memorable events with a wider audience, but I forget to do it. Take our wedding forty-some years ago. I don’t think people hire a photographer when they’re married by a judge, and we didn’t own a camera in those days. Still, we had several parties and not one picture to even remind us who was there.

Last week, five friends from grade school — we played together, formed secret clubs, and graduated from Brownies to Girls Scouts — came to my house. During lunch each of us shared a CliffsNotes synopsis of our lives over the intervening fifty years between high school and the present. Guess what? I had my phone at the ready and forgot to take a single photo.

Two years ago I was sitting at Starbucks with my Spanish friend, Ana. (She passed away in June). I remember Ana pausing in our conversation to say, “Those girls at the next table are from Spain.” She got their attention and introduced both of us, found out they were au pairs and gave them her phone number. Ana and the young women kept in touch. Last week, one of them tracked me down, saying that her mother was in town and wanted to have a Spanish/English conversation with an American. “It would be a nice connection with Ana,” the girl said, “since she didn’t have the pleasure to meet my mom in person.”

We had that conversation this morning, and it was a nice connection. Ana’s spirit was with us. Best of all, this time I remembered my iPhone.