The gift of reconnecting with old friends

Kay Clements rediscovered the joys of close connections with others on her 2019 sabbatical. She’s been working to bring more of them into her life ever since.

“I wanted daily access to all my buddies with spa dates, coffee dates, hiking and leisurely glasses of wine at bookstore gatherings,” she said, calling that the locus of her mission. The Lynn Canal Broadcasting general manager also wanted to resume regular lunches and conversations with her brother, who lives in California.

So Clements loaded up her car with whatever seemed necessary for six months and hit the road. Her border terrier, Frankie, originally slated to be her copilot, passed away shortly before her trip, so Clements traveled solo.

Initially full of plans about where she’d go and what she’d do, Clements said she began discarding them like “layers in spring” after a few days of contemplation. Instead she went wherever she desired at any given moment.

First she drove to Vancouver to visit friends from 30 years ago. Even after so many years, the shared time was incredibly powerful in a way that “gives me goose bumps,” she said.

After that she traveled to Montana to see another friend, and — other than a visit with cousins in South Carolina — spent most of the rest of her time in California, where she reconnected with many old friends and her brother. Shared history and friendship, she learned, are essential to her.

Returning home to Haines at the end of her sabbatical, Clements found it was those deep personal connections she missed the most. So she began implementing new habits, walking her puppy down to a neighbor’s for coffee every morning, playing regular Scrabble games with friends, and generally “reaching out more.”

In the end, while the sabbatical didn’t provide the epiphany about her future plans that Clements had hoped for, she described it as “a daily gift.”

“It was extraordinary and as someone who has a bit of a raised eyebrow on life and can be suspicious of feeling too good, I can tell you I thanked the deities each day of my six months.”