Old Souls

One summer day in 1996 I had an appointment at the Atlanta Airport Westin Hotel with a conference services manager to talk about booking a meeting there for my association’s executive committee. When I arrived at the hotel, I went to the front desk to announce my arrival. A few minutes later, I spotted a smiling young Asian woman gliding down the escalator toward me. Instinctively I knew this was Marina Lim, the person I was due to meet. She walked straight toward me, introduced herself, and guided me toward the hotel restaurant where we would eat lunch and discuss my meeting needs.

As soon as we sat down, we began talking, not about business, but about all sorts of interesting subjects. Marina was in her mid-twenties; I was pushing 50. I was old enough to be her mother. There was no time spent on getting to know each other. We were immediately at ease and talking about our families, our lives, our dreams, our jobs. To listen to us, you’d think we had known each other for years! This day was the beginning of a friendship that has been strong for 12 years. At the end of our meeting, Marina had a contract for my meeting, and both of us had a new friend. Instead of shaking hands when the meeting was over, we hugged.



One day, when Marina and I met for lunch after not seeing each other for almost a year, she said to me, “We are Old Souls. We’ve known each other since before we were born.” This is the reason why we were instant friends when we met, and why we can go for months, or even years, between seeing each other, and still be able to take up where we left off whenever we get together. She now calls me Mom Jennie, and she is my Precious Daughter. Indeed, we are Old Souls. Marina is now the mother of two beautiful children, and she lives in New Orleans. She is as close to me, however, as my own heart, and I know that the next time I see her it will be as if no time has passed at all since our last meeting.

This kind of friendship is very rare for me, as I typically don’t make friends easily or quickly. I am a firm believer in Old Souls and those special ones who have come into my life over the years. There aren’t very many of them- I am not a person who has an abundance of close friends. If I take the time to count the Old Souls whose lives have crossed paths with mine, I could count them on my fingers without having to go to my toes. I cherish them, and each of them has a unique story to add to the extraordinary days of my life.

As a reader of my blog, you will probably get to know some of these folks.