Walking between buildings and the el this past weekend, re-wrapping my scarf around my neck, I kept thinking that it was the coldest evening imaginable. Then I thought about a night in December when I talked a couple friends into checking out a gallery where a friend of ours had some of her paintings on display.

More than seeing my words floating in vapor as I spoke, as evidence of the inhospitably extreme temperature, I even hated the feeling of slipping into my friend’s car because the leather seats never seemed to warm up.

But it was the last weekend of Montana’s show, and we couldn’t imagine NOT GOING.

Montana was a special friend who passed away a few years ago. Her boyfriend shipped pieces for the Lill Street Gallery exhibit from northern California where they spent her last years.

Standing at around 4’10” tall, it was funny that she always seemed larger than life. She had the unusual talent, by the example of her own life, to give people permission to do what they wanted to do. After she made a little money in real estate, she basically painted every day in her studio under her apartment, listened to opera on WFMT and ran a cooperative gallery.

A veritable pioneer in the now trendy Bucktown neighborhood, it was artists like her that made it a cool area to make your home or open up a café.

Six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world.

I know Deb (one of my companions on our frozen art adventure) from Montana because Montana went to the School of the Art Institute with Shari whose boyfriend (later husband) lived on the same block. I know Nancy (the other third of our trio) because she worked for the same company as my ex-husband and mutual friends from the engineering firm introduced us.

Now Deb and Nancy are good friends. I can claim some responsibility for this (and gladly will) as I invited Nancy to a regularly meeting book group that Montana ran maybe 20 years ago.

You get the picture.

An electrician might think of connectors as small pieces of hardware that keep a circuit going. Whether networking in the business world or navigating purely social relationships, we generally rely on the people we know to make our circles bigger. Then it’s up to us to build and sustain relationships.

Some relationships are for life. They grow and change as you do. Some relationships only seem to last a short time, and others slip away for different reasons over time.

As we looked at Montana’s paintings, we tried to recall when particular ones were done and confessed wondering whether any of us might have shown up as a shadowy, unnameable figure in one of her acrylics. At the moment, I wanted to thank all sorts of people who were no longer in my life but who served as a vital connector.

I tried to trace the lineage, the beginnings, of other relationships. I asked myself where I knew different people from. Who introduced us? Over what did we bond?

Okay, I haven’t had contact with my ex for almost 30 years, but I could thank him for bringing Nancy and a few other people into my life. There are many other people who are no longer on my radar that introduced me to significant people or greatly impacted my worldview.

I feel like thanking them all.

Going to see the traveling show of Montana’s artwork and know that she lives on for me in the form of the relationships she helped me spawn made me think about this.

Remembering that even short-lived relationships live on in our interests or in other relationships is no small thing.