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.
