This evening, I went to Elwood, a suburb close to where Chris’s parents live, to have dinner at a Greek restaurant with a friend I made on Instagram during the pandemic. Since 2022, I’ve been meeting with her once a year in December when we come back down here. In 2022, we met at a cafe here in Brighton with our respective babies. In 2023, we met at a children’s museum so the kids could play while we caught up. And this year, we actually went out without the kids and just caught up one on one. She seemed really relieved when I suggested we just meet up 1:1 (which was at Chris’s suggestion). She’s had a slightly difficult year, and she was looking forward to the child-free time with me and some wine.

We’ve only ever seen each other three times, but we’ve had a lot of conversations through Instagram messenger over the years. We have a lot in common, as we originally found out about each other through each others’ food handles, and with a shared culture, plus the fact that she’s Melbourne based, it added to our commonalities. Once we ended up coincidentally having kids around the same time, I thought it might even be like fate that we were supposed to be friends in opposite hemispheres. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there are not only different definitions of “closeness,” but also different definitions of “comfort.” Even though I’ve only seen her in person three times, every time we’re together, it feels really comfortable, almost as though we can talk about anything and everything is just an open book. She opened up to me about her family problems, marital problems, debate about whether to have a second child. She talked to me about her own evolution in terms of her views on therapy, as she’s currently in therapy and had convinced her husband to do couples therapy, as well. I talked to her about my family dynamics, Ed’s struggles and suicide at her request, and we talked a lot about intergenerational trauma and how to heal and move on from it.

Sometimes, you can’t always have frequency of in-person meetups due to, well, geography and life. But I feel lucky to know I have one friend in Melbourne who has no connection to Chris I can meet up with and feel comfortable with when I come all the way here. It’s nice to have someone so far away that will make time for you and look forward to seeing you, even when you originally started as complete strangers. It’s a really nice kind of kinship that I am grateful for.