The uncertainties of friendship

 

Is the garden of your friendships this colorful and varied?

Last night I had supper with a woman I knew fifty years ago when I was a young mother and she was a babysitting teenager. We’d touched base over the years a bit, but last night was our first time to visit and reminisce and laugh and trade stories. And it made me grateful for renewed friendships.

Facebook played a part in bringing us back together, and Facebook is at least partly responsible for other renewed friendships and some that are new in recent years. I am still in close touch with my best friend from high school, mostly through Facebook but occasionally through more personal emails. We know all about each other’s families—she has five children and umpteen greats to my four children and seven grands. We trade recipes and stories of aging—we are right now in that two-month period when I am a year older, and she delights in rubbing it in. It is a treasured relationship.

Similarly I remain close to a couple I knew in the early sixties in graduate school. We have never again lived in the same city, but we have visited over the years, both in Santa Fe and Fort Worth. We can go weeks without talking and then pick up right where we left off. It is a reassuring friendship to me.

But over the years I’ve also lost friends as they seem to drop by the wayside. One friend in the East is always a frequent correspondent, with long emails, just after she’s visited and we’ve had a good catching up on everything from dogs and recipes to our shared political views. But then it drops off gradually, and now I don’t think I’ve heard in a year. I should write—and I will soon.

Recently, talking to Megan, I heard her use the term “ghosted”—her physical therapist had ghosted her and did not return phone calls or emails. It occurred to me that I have been ghosted by some, and a couple of them bother me, because they are like unsolved mysteries. One is a woman I traveled the state of Texas with as we went from writers conference to workshop to lectures. We even performed our “dog and pony show” where she talked of being a fifth generation Texan and I countered with tales of a newcomer. Somehow in recent years I felt a growing distance and had the sense that I had angered or hurt her. I should have asked, but I lacked the nerve. I emailed and she’d answer, but now there’s no word. I understand she is beset by health problems and the like. And I can understand that. Sort of.

Another that bothers me is a man I used to lunch with frequently. We were good friends who shared lots of laughs, family events, etc. His wife used to laugh about “the other woman.” Last time I saw him he joked that retirement meant he’d have to take me to lunch more often. Then I called him one day for a referral, and there was a new distance in his voice, a coldness. And one day at church when his wife said, “Look who’s here!” he said, “Yeah,” and kept walking. Brainwashed female that I am, I assume I did something, but I have no idea what. It’s been at least three years now, and it still bothers me.

Author Ann Lamott, whose wisdom blows me away, says that when someone drops out of your life, it means that their part in your story is over. I can understand that, I guess, but I’d like more graceful exits.

I’m not blameless either. I have let some friendships go, mostly when it became burdensome to maintain them, once over not exactly politics but the moral stance involved. But there again, typical female, I feel guilty. Sometimes though I want to point out that friendship is a two-way street.

Meantime I treasure the many friendships I am blessed with, like a couple of good women I’ve know for forty years. But there are also people who I consider close friends who have newly come into my life. Friendship is an ever-changing thing. My working philosophy is that friendship is like a garden—you have to tend to it, nurture it, show it affection. And it’s always a work in progress.