The value of new friends

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.

Throughout my life, I have been blessed with friends, many of whom are still in my life today. Witness the fact that I am still in contact with the girls who grew up next door to me in Chicago—they were part of my life ever since I can remember. And one of the people who understands me better than most? The friend I made in fifth or sixth grade at church—our lives diverged, but we have always been in touch and always value each other. Among my long-term friends, a couple I knew when working on my master’s degree in Missouri—I remember when they married, and they celebrated their fiftieth several years ago. Yes, I am getting old.

But I am not too old to make new friends, and last night a “new” friend came for supper in the cottage. She is a relatively new associate minister at our church, someone I’d met and visited with twice over meals, but not someone I had ever had a long and one-on-one conversation with.

You know, sometimes with old friends and even family there are long silences in your communication, as though you’ve exhausted everything there is to say. It’s not always a bad sign, though I do remember that when my marriage was falling apart, we would go to dinner and have absolutely nothing to say to each other. On a happier note, I see this silence even with my kids—sometimes we’ve said it all, and the bond between us is unspoken.

But new people offer all kinds of conversational opportunity. There’s so much to explore about the other person. Last night’s conversation was a two-way street as I learned about my guest and shared with her some of the milestones of my life. The nice thing is that we were both genuinely interested in learning about each other. We talked of kids and dogs and divorce, of climate change and the disaster in our country. She is a person of boundless energy and, like me, on who thrives on optimism. We may both be Pollyanna crying in the dark, but we believe in the future. We believe that our country will go back to being a democracy, that this dark period is a good learning lesson. We share a deep religious faith though she puts hers to more active use than I do. I have rarely known time to go by so quickly and happily. We talked—and ate and drank wine—for almost three hours.

I had fixed a light summer supper. When I entertain, the food is almost always an experiment, and so it was last night. Okroshka, which I’d never heard of before I found a recipe in the New York Times. A traditional cold summer soup from Russia. There are, of course, variations on the recipe, but I made it with a base of yogurt and buttermilk, diluted with water. I chopped all kinds of things to go in it—potato, scallions, cucumber, radish, cooked chicken, hard-boiled eggs. I worried if I should warn her, ask if she was lactose intolerant—it is, after all, a fairly unusual dish.

My oldest daughter called the night before and asked what I was doing. I said, “Making a soup you wouldn’t like.” When she heard the ingredients—yogurt and buttermilk—she said, “Yewwww.” Megan does not like white things—sour cream, cream cheese, mayonnaise, yogurt, goat cheese—though she regrets the latter because she says everyone who eats it loves it. But my soup is not everyone’s cup of soup.

Fortunately it, and the blue cheese salad that accompanied it, were enthusiastically received. I decided to splurge for dessert and bought two pieces of chocolate ganache cake from Central Market. So wrong! One piece was more than enough for both of us. One of the problems with my curbside pickup is that I can’t always tell about size or quantity. These pieces were huge, and Jordan, Christian, and I will share the second piece tonight.

Meantime I am hoping that my new friendship will, like the new wine mentioned above, mellow and refine with age. But may we never run out of things to talk about.