Happy Birthday Clare, Pen Friends for Life

In honor of my dear friend Clare's birthday today, I thought that it would be fun to share how we met. In 1992, I was a sophmore in high school. I was taking french as my foreign language and our teacher Mme. Nghiem mentioned pen pal program. You paid two dollars and they would set you up with a pen pal. I filled out a form and paid four dollars. Of course, I paid for a french pen pal but as it is well recorded, I am a Anglophile and wanted a British pen pal.

 A few months later a letter appeared in my mail box, it was from Clare. She included her picture and a nice letter telling me about her life. I wrote back telling her of my life and including a picture. We would write letters about school, music, family life. We sent each other packages with goodies from our countries. Eventually we graduated to phone calls. For the rest of our school careers and beyond we were confidants and friends.

It was always my intention to go visit her, but every year I would fail math and have to go to summer school. Finally, when I married Marty she came over here for my wedding. What a joyous day to meet and be together. We had the best time the week before my wedding traveling all over Southern California and sightseeing. It was truly a wonderful memorable time together.

Sadly, after that we lost touch for a couple of years. We grew apart and went our seperate ways. Then in 1999 we reconnected with each other via the worldwide web. Our first phone call was a rather teary affair where we shared about where life had taken us. We both had become mothers and it was so exciting to share all about our sons.  After that we took to emailing and sharing pictures via the web.

I still owe her a trip and promise that will be sooner than later. My lifelong dream is to go see the UK and spend time with Clare. Now we Skype instead of phone chat and talk everyday on Facebook. Boy, how far we have come from our letter writing days. This is actually a good thing for us, because we both have TERRIBLE penmanship! ( which was probably a saving grace for both of us, a girl with nice handwriting might have kicked the other to the curb..hee hee)

The best part of all is our sons have become good friends. They love to Skype chat and meet up on PS3 to play video games with each other. Who would have ever imagined that? I don't think either of us. We have to girls coming up and I am sure someday they will be friends too.


Next year, we will celebrate 20 years of being friends. GAH! That makes one feel old saying that! She is one of the special people in my life, one of the people who has been there through it all.  Can't wait until the day we can hug each other again. Happy birthday my friend, you truly are one of the sisters of my heart.




A/N The french pen pal never wrote me back.