Acquaintance Becomes a Friend

as told by Barbara Scholer Brown.

Leilani swam into my life 33 years ago, 1991. I was 33 and on my honeymoon.

My husband, Randy, and I were snorkeling in Maui when we met Leilani and her husband, Andrew. We just hit it off and got to talking for over two hours. When we parted, we exchanged home addresses.

I don't remember who sent the first postcard. But from then on, every time we went somewhere, we'd send a postcard sharing personal tidbits. “I’ve come up to Baltimore to see my sister.” A postcard from an airplane museum or an art gallery with some kind of captivating information. Being on the East Coast, my travels were from New England to Florida, Europe, and Canada. Leilani is on the West Coast, so her trips were from Washington to California, Hawaii, and Australia.

Recently I took one of my shoeboxes with the postcards and spread them out. So many!

I didn’t save them at first, and then, a few years into it, I began to acknowledge that not many people would remain committed this way to someone they hardly knew. I thought, “This is going somewhere. I better start saving these".

Thirty three years later, Randy and I took a trip to Vancouver in 2024, and just on the chance, I contacted Leilani to see if they wanted to meet up. She immediately responded, “Absolutely, we're coming!”

At first I was a little nervous about our meetup, only having known each other through postcards. The restaurant we chose has a three-hour time limit on a table. We were there every bit of that time. My apprehension was unfounded.

Something happened during that dinner. Electric. It was our souls connecting.

This was a starting over for us. A whole new relationship, a much richer connection developed from that meeting.

Acquaintances became friends.

Since that time we’ve been texting. Tidbits. The other day she was in nature picking raspberries and texted me a picture of a deer. She wanted to meet my children. During her travels, she made it a point to get together with them.

Leilani saved the postcards, too. One day we will get together with all the postcards...a diary through the years that allowed us to start over 33 years later.

(Barbara was 33 when she met Leilani. They met again 33 years later. The number 33 is considered a 'master number.' It is said to promote creativity and artistic expression and is associated with harmonious and caring energy.)