That's Jason and Emily on the couch, and Michele and me on the floor. What a great night of reminiscing we had!

Through the magic that is Facebook, I have been able to reconnect with a lot of old friends from elementary, middle and high school.

One of those people is my friend Jason.

Jason is a year younger than I, and I actually met his older sister Sarah before I met him. Sarah was in my third grade class the year I moved from New Jersey to Michigan.

I can't tell you for sure how I met Jason. I suspect it was at a sleepover at Sarah's house when we were in elementary school, but I can't be certain.

But I digress.

Anyway, as the years wore on Jason turned out to be something of a prodigy ... a brilliant kid advanced far beyond his peers academically. He started taking advanced placement and college prep classes early, which put us in a lot of the same courses. He was in band (he played tuba, I played trumpet), so we went on a lot of band trips together. We both joined the drama club, and were in a lot of plays together (we were even married once, portraying John and Elizabeth Proctor in "The Crucible").

We grew exceedingly close, and remained so until he went away to college in the fall of 1989. Life happened, as it does, and we went down different paths and lost touch. I heard through the grapevine that he became a father very young and very unexpectedly. In a strange parallel, I too became a young parent. His son Jacob was born on Dec. 2, 1990, and my daughter Dani was born Jan. 4, 1991.

The years went by, and I would hear things about Jason here and there, but I didn't see him.

Until he popped up on Facebook.

We started talking almost daily online. He was a grad student at the University of Michigan doing something wildly scientific (of course). He was married to a lovely woman who played violin with a symphony orchestra (of course). His son was a photographer, and was just about to go to Germany for three weeks to "find himself" (of course).

A mutual friend of ours, also a Facebooker, posted an invite to her husband's birthday party on May 22 (Jason and the mutual friend, Michele, both reside in the Kalamazoo, Mich. area).

It was a heck of a drive, but Jason wondered if my husband and I would attend, as he and his wife were planning on it.

Since it was my birthday too, my husband agreed we could go and spend the night at Michele's.

On Friday, after a 257-mile car ride, Andy and I pulled into the driveway of Michele and her husband Peter's old, 23-room farmhouse just outside the Kalamazoo city limits. I spotted Jason from 50 paces. He was standing on the porch with his wife (ironically also a Sarah), who I recognized from Facebook photos, and my best friend Emily.

I bounded from the car and up the porch steps to envelope Jason in a hug. It was 20 years later, but to me he looked, sounded, smelled and felt exactly the way he did when I saw him last.

After all the introductions and hand-shaking, all of us from Quincy High School and our spouses found a quiet parlor in the house (we had a few to choose from ... seriously, I needed a map to find my way around Michele's house) and spent the next few hours catching up. Sarah and Andy were regaled with tales from our youth, and they indulged us by letting us talk about the old days.

It was like no time had passed at all.

It was a beautiful thing.

In the last 20 years, I couldn't even venture a guess as to how many people I've met. I've made all kinds of friends, and people have come into my life and enriched it in ways I never thought possible.

But as I look forward to my next 40 years, I know that it will always warm my heart to look back on the last 40. My old friends have shaped me; have made me who I am.

I thank them for that. And no matter how much time passes between visits, their place in my heart will always be just that ... theirs.