Make new friends but keep the old,

 

Surely you know the next line of the verse: Those are silver, these are gold. This morning I heard from the one person on earth who has known me the longest (except my brother). Judy Wieland Fleener lived next door when I was born. She was probably about two years old when I appeared. We were neighbors, playmates, and friends (despite our families’ political differences) until our twenties when we both married and moved away. I think it’s wonderful and remarkable that some eighty years later we are still friends. And popular as it is to diss on Facebook, our ongoing friendship is one of the things I credit to Facebook. Before social media, we were down to the yearly impersonal Christmas card. Now, I know a lot more about her life, and I warrant she does mine. She wrote this morning in response to my blog last night on memories of Chicago

Memes on Facebook frequently ask if you have long term friendships, and I’ve gathered it’s a rare thing. But I am blessed with several friends from thirty, forty, even fifty years ago. The woman today who understands me best is a friend I met in probably fifth or sixth grade. She married and moved to Mississippi; I moved to Texas. Our lives diverged and yet we share much—a strong sense of family (she has five children to my four and more greats than I will ever have). But as with Judy Fleener, much of what binds us together is our memories of Chicago.

But it is not only Chicago that holds me to friends. I treasure some who are Texans, a special couple who live in Nebraska, a family in Virginia. “My people” are scattered across the map.

I’ve accumulated “new” friends—many not so new—over the years. People I worked with at TCU, people from the literary community in Texas and writers whose books I published, more recently a few members of the Guppies chapter of Sisters in Crime and others in my writing circle in Story Circle Network—these ladies seem like true sisters. I am particularly grateful to Jean, mentioned often in this blog, for friendship that strengthened during pandemic. We were both careful about quarantine, and we were both alone (though I have my local family), and we found good times in sharing happy hour and supper. She is one of the few people who is almost always enthusiastic about my cooking experiments.

But I’ve also watched over the years as some once-friends drifted away, whether through diverging interests or changing lifestyles or what. There’s a man I once lunched with frequently who now, for some reason I don’t understand, has distanced himself from me. And I’ve lost common ground with a few women I was once really close to, some over what I consider moral differences during the trump presidency. During pandemic, it’s been too easy to lose friends because we were never sure who we could let into our hive, who was safe. I have a friend who is much out in the unvaccinated pubic, and I admitted to her the other day, by phone, that her exposure was the reason I was avoiding her. She said, “You’re right to do that.” Not everybody is that understanding.

I read once that when a person drifts out of your life it means they are no longer a part of your story, and I find that a comforting thought. The story goes on, just not the friendship. Though it sometimes feels that way, a lost friendship is not the end of the world. But I also insist that friendship is like a garden—you have to tend it and work it so that it will flourish. Again, hard to do during pandemic. But some people are just not good communicators, and they are the ones likely to drift out of your life and your story.

I am going tomorrow night to dinner with three long term friends. We try to have supper once a month, though that was sorely tested in the last year and a half. But we always manage to celebrate birthdays—and tomorrow night, admittedly late, we will celebrate an early September birthday. I find these friendships comforting in good times and troubled, like we live in now. But I do miss some of those who drifted out of my story.

Sweet dreams, everyone.