From Pixels to Wool to Happy Tears

It’s not an unusual conversation; we’re not unique.  I know of many other people – couples, family members, acquaintances, strangers – who have had the same talk, likely with the same ambivalent, unresolved sort of ending.  The topic: Can you call someone a friend when you’ve never met them face-to-face?  Can these strangers on a message board, these random groups of pixels gathered in the Comments section of my blog, really be considered friends in any sense of the word?  Can I really derive serious entertainment, important interactions, emotional support, from these people?

My response?

Hell, yes.

I’ve had some level of online social life for, oh, 18 or 19 years, by this point, with a noticeable increase when I was on bed rest during my pregnancy with Jacob. I sat alone in my bedroom, stuck in place by doctor’s orders and by the limitations of the pre-wireless days, and desperately reached out for proof that I could carry this pregnancy to term. I needed success stories, and I needed facts and figures, and I needed hand-holding.

I won’t debate that there is something special about having time in the same room with a friend; that a conversation over lunch is usually more satisfying than a chat on Gmail. But geography is a beastly thing, and it makes sharing oxygen difficult, if not impossible, with many of the people whose personalities are most well-suited to your own. Who are more able to offer comfort and encouragement with a handful of typed characters than a lifelong family member can give with a hug and an hour’s worth of words.

I’ve known this for a long time, and have endured Willem’s quiet-but-reserved acceptance of my time online. He didn’t openly doubt me when I tried to explain how important some of these relationships were to me, but he also wasn’t fully convinced. And I get that: how can you possibly rely more heavily on someone you’ve never met than, say, on someone with whom you had spent years living next to in college? I think he felt that his college friendships, while tending to be on the quiet and un-nurtured side most of the time, would rise up and be there for him in times of need, and that my online friendships, which had taken so much of my energy and attention over the years, would prove to be a waste of time if a crisis hit and I needed support in real life.

You know where this is going, right?

Because when I got sick, we were simply flooded with support, in all forms, from all over the globe. For the first time, we both realized how much it meant just to get a simple text message or email, or a card in the mail; not to mention the gifts, running the gamut from cash to care packages to prepared dinners. These were things we usually – but certainly not always, because of our simple ignorance of their significance – remembered and bothered to send when someone we knew was ill, and always with an open heart and genuine well wishes, but never knowing that the smallest thing could alter the tone of an entire day.

And so, so many of these gifts came from people I couldn’t pick out of a lineup; from online friends who would qualify as strangers if we were both in the same checkout line at the grocery store. But they cared, so they bothered, and it mattered. (And, sorry guys, but so, so few of these efforts were made by Willem’s fraternity buddies, the brothers for life… only they were more prone to sit back and wait to be asked for help, “because we didn’t want to push and we thought Willem needed space,” as one gentleman explained to me.  Which is valid and I don’t want to pass judgment on a set of relationships I’ll never understand, not being one of the brotherhood myself. But my experience was that none of the notes or offers of sympathy, support or help that we received ever felt intrusive or inappropriate.)

I had already been bowled away by the generosity and thoughtfulness of our family and friends through this whole ordeal, and had started writing thank-you notes. I was appreciating the fact that the flood of cards and phone calls and packages had ebbed, because that meant that the immediate crisis had passed and we were settling back into some form of normal. Then I got one more box, unceremoniously dumped on the front doorstep by a mailman ignorant of the miracle he was delivering. Even if he had known what was in it, he might just have shrugged and moved on: it was just a blanket, after all. Knitted in all of my favorite colors, reminiscent of stained glass or sea glass. Pretty enough, sure, but everybody has blankets, right? What’s special about this one?

What’s special is, each square was knitted and sent to one talented crocheter, who arranged and pieced them all together, took the time to attach tags so that I could identify the artists, and mailed it all to me. Each was knitted in support of me and my family; a tangible effort to show the love and concern they had for us. They started when I was still in the hospital and my future was so dreadfully uncertain, and they couldn’t know what shape I would be in when I had the blanket in-hand. I ended up beating it home, a fact which doesn’t seem to have disappointed anyone, and was able to share its opening with Willem and my mother.

So, yeah, online relationships are real, true, honest, genuine, valid relationships, and my recent struggles have only proven so with more strength and certainty. And I am unspeakably grateful for my friends, no matter how I know them.