Long before there was Facebook, I’ve thought about networks. It started in earnest when I was writing my dissertation, examining the networks of reputation and social credit that existed in neighborhoods and communities in 16th and 17th century England. That got me thinking about reputation in the modern world. It’s no less important now, and at its core, it’s based on very similar principles: how well does the individual uphold and abide by the mores of the community in which s/he lives?

My own networks include people I met in school (any of the many schools I’ve attended), other parents at my daughters’ schools, my friends from writing groups, my friends from dreamwork, my neighbors, my family. Some of the groups are close-knit and well established. Others are more fluid. Some memberships overlap. Friends of friends create new circles. People who are in more than one critique group create critique group “cousins” who meet and often start new friendships at conferences and workshops.

In the old days–twenty-five years ago, say–those networks held together by proximity or snail mail. I have quite a collection of letters from high school and college friends, physical records of the friendships we shared. (And I wonder if they have my old letters somewhere!) Now, of course, it’s much more likely to be email or phone calls. Or Facebook. The advantage to social networking in the ether is that it’s easy to stay in touch with a lot of people at once. If I have big news, or just something quick to say, I can update my status and my dozens of  “friends” will get the message. The disadvantage is that this method of communication reduces our exchange of thoughts to little bites, often of little real consequence. It’s like a buffet of hors d’oeuvres at a big party instead of an intimate luncheon or dinner.

My first plunge into Facebook brought me back into contact with friends I’d had little or no contact with for years. Friends from high school, mostly, including the boy I first really kissed. Those friends are all grown up and, for the most part, married, off living their own lives. But being back in touch brings up all sorts of memories. What that first kiss was like, how my heart was badly bruised by another of my friends, how my girl friends and I spent way too much time talking about boys. All of it grist for the mill, as any writer knows, but if it weren’t for Facebook, it wouldn’t be, well, in my face.

The computer age has certainly made it easier to maintain and build networks. One of my groups of friends has, thanks to email, held together for more than twenty years even though we’ve scattered across the county. Some of them are on Facebook with me. And some of my Facebook friends are people I hardly know, but have met through writers’ conferences and listserves. But the real magic of it for me is being able to reconnect with friends. As much as I’d love to have face-to-face reunions with the people I knew way back when, touching thoughts through the ether is a wondrous thing.

It’s all about accommodation. My daughter and I avoid eating gluten because it adversely affects our health. At home, after about seven months of this diet, we’ve adapted quite well. My daughter takes her own lunch to school, but she’s always done that, so that wasn’t a big adjustment. But when we travel, all bets are off. Try finding foods in an airport that don’t contain wheat flour, barley malt, or wheat extracts. A salad with no croutons might do it, but the dressing could be a problem. Try adapting to the habits and comfort foods of an extended family of 13 people, when only two are on this diet. Sometimes they make changes for us, but most often, we provide our own alternate dishes to eat. At family-style,”American” restaurants, most often the only gluten-free options are salads and French fries. But we learned the hard way that you always have to ask how food is made–the last place we ordered fries, they came “battered,” which meant they had wheat flour all over them. The waitress brought my daughter cantaloupe and sliced raw carrots, but that didn’t make much of a lunch for a kid.

Sometimes I get discouraged about educating folks around us about our needs, or eating carrots while everyone else is enjoying a full meal. But then this morning, I got a call from the father of one of my daughter’s friends. He’s hosting his son’s birthday party next week, and was calling to let me know that they’re making gluten-free muffins for the party and wanted to know if there was a particular kind of frosting that I could recommend so they could make the muffins more like cupcakes. I told him how much I appreciate his thoughtfulness, and he said his son “wants to be sure we get this right.” That effort to make my daughter comfortable and a full participant in the party has cheered my whole day.

We all have our challenges and struggles in life. Sometimes, they are widely shared (the economic downturn, a big storm, climate change), and sometimes they are personal. The ways in which we help each other, from the small gestures to the big sacrifices, remind us of the better side of our shared humanity. Sometimes we make the effort to help others, and sometimes we are able to accept assistance. Here’s hoping I can do both with grace and good cheer.