Thursday, January 8, 2009

31 fractures: 5

1/5: Farheen

Farheen and I met on the Board of NASCO a few years ago. She's a brilliant and inspirational person. I am absolutely blown-away by how amazing, ambitious, and together she is. She refuses to let anything stand in the way of her dreams. I aspire to have such a great attitude and capacity for hard work. If you think I work a lot, the amount of work she puts in makes me look like a total slacker.

The last time we met was about 10 pm on one evening in the middle of August. My sister and I were on the way out of town, but stopped at her place for a cup of tea first, and stayed for a few hours. My sister talked with her daughter, and she and I talked about all sorts of things. She reminded me to keep doing what I am trying to do, despite the difficulties; she is an amazing mentor.

This time, I was spontaneously in her town for one night, and I ended up waiting for her at a local community center, where she was meeting her girl scouts to "talk about cookies." (As a side note, it's a totally great community center, packed with high-schoolers playing basketball, middle-schoolers in the computer lab, and kids of all ages running around, having fun, or studying. Additionally, various adults come for meeting, volunteering, or community events. It is packed. It is obviously meeting a need in the community. I wish I had a place like that to go to, growing up.)

I was very nervous; I'm miserable at keeping in touch with people, and I was worried about what to say or do. How do you catch up with someone when the thing you have in common is gone (except for our similar political beliefs)? I first saw her daughter, who was studying with a group from school when I first got there. We only vaguely remembered each other, but she was very polite. I went through their school-age library, and found a ton of old books that I had read when I was much younger. Its strange how going back to that city takes me back to when I was a kid.

When Farheen showed up she was very glad to see me. We spent a little bit of time catching up, but she had to get to her girl scouts and I had to head to a meeting. However, she is as kind and wonderful as ever. She promised to bring her girl scouts (well, at least herself and maybe her girl scouts) to my play in the spring. While I am glad to see her, I know that we will both continue to be very busy. I hope that when we are in the same town we can get together for tea or coffee and catching up, and in the meantime that we can continue to trade strategies and ideas. She is absolutely brilliant and amazing, and I continue to be inspired by what she does.

It's sort of sad, though. I hope that sometime we'll find time to be part of each others' lives, a bit more than just being parts of the same network working towards...well, that's for the other blog.

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