Recently our neighbour from Plymouth came to stay for the weekend and I was in heaven. Even though it took years of small interactions living next door to each other before we could call ourselves friends, we did indeed become friends and I’ve missed her company since we’ve moved.
While she was here, beside books and poetry, gardens and our kids, we talked about friends and friendship. We discussed whether maybe it was OK to not keep making new friends. We both have so many wonderful long-time friends already. Do we need more? Perhaps not.
I’ve written many times about friends: about our first friends; about making new friends; and again about longtime friends at the end of this essay. I LOVE my longtime friends. And I‘ve also whined about how difficult it is for me to meet new people when we move someplace new, and how isolated I sometimes feel.
What I miss locally is not a longtime close friend living nearby (although wouldn’t that be lovely!), but rather someone I could ring up to go for a walk, or meet for a coffee, or whatever. To have an interesting and satisfying connection that day. There aren’t too many people we know on the Island who fit that description. The people we know—a number we can count on one hand—are busy with work and/or school age children.
My friend wisely observed that perhaps we are the wrong age for the place we live. We don’t have school age children which is when you meet everyone. Nor are we full-time retired, able to join clubs and take part in daytime activities. And then of course we leave for a month at a time, at least three times a year, and we both work at home.
It turns out we are not the reliable friends you can count on to be there for you, anytime.
Connections and eventual friendships all seem to start with a conversation. And then another and another. They take place over time, and through sharing tidbits of this and that. Perhaps a favour is asked or offered. And then another. Small tokens might be exchanged (an article link, a book recommendation, or a funny movie) and then a coffee out. Then maybe a meal, with confidences exchanged as well. And then more conversation. It all builds up over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a much longer period.
So while I don’t want more deep and longtime friends, I do need to keep filling the pipeline, as they say in sales, for possible future friends. Maybe not the forever, longtime ones, but the casual, go for a coffee or a walk ones. And since friendships never start in the middle and need some nurturing time to get comfortable, we need to make the effort a little bit at a time to get to that point eventually. Perhaps this should be my new mantra: When I meet someone new, consider making time again, and again, for the longer-term reward of having a friend. Hmmm: can this shy writer make this kind of effort repeatedly?
After our friend left, Pete and I headed up to London for an overnight stay with family and a day of activities. I spent the morning enjoying a monthly in-person session with my daily online writers group. I conversed at length with two new people. We chatted about our writing lives and writing strategies. I was offered some useful advice for revising my in-progress story structure, and the other person and I chatted about the push and pull of home comfort versus interesting travel. It was exciting and tiny bit thrilling to be in a place where we were encouraged to talk to each other even though we are perfect strangers.
In the afternoon I met up with a colleague of Pete’s who I have gotten to know over the years, and although we are not longtime close friends, we regard each other fondly and have learned a lot about each other’s lives. She and I had a short but warm and important touchstone conversation: the kind that keeps alive our connection and acknowledges our mutual care for each other.
I felt a bit like a ping-pong ball, in that I had a series of different kinds of conversations one right after the other over a short time period: close ones with my former neighbour and our family that are easy and funny and filled with love, harder but interesting conversations with strangers who are now not-strangers, an intermediate connection renewed, and back to warm silly family.
I was buoyed by them all: if it is in small doses, I absolutely delight in meeting with all kinds of people and it was no different this time. I love hearing tidbits of their lives and learning what makes each person happy, frustrated or curious.
Now I just need to keep working on those small, repeatable actions that will get me to new Very Rewarding Friendships, closer to home.
Because I always find a song or a quotation that has something deeper to complement my words, I’ll leave you with a few versus from the song “For Good” from Wicked1, the musical.
I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you:
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good
Thanks so much for reading!
Let me know if you have any trouble making friends, and how you manage that, if so. Maybe you don’t care! Or maybe you don’t keep moving like me so it is easier to keep the good ones close. Or maybe you have all the ones you want or need, and I salute you!
With friendship,
xx Sabrina
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https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/wicked/forgood.htm
I know I read this when you'd first published it, Sabrina, but having dived into Geography of Home this afternoon on a long-overdue catch-up of glorious reading I've noticed that I hadn't hit the heart or commented!
Lovely to see Ventnor Botanic Garden here - it's a super place. We were there a few years back for a family birthday - my parents had rented the holiday cottage on site, and in the evenings we had the garden to ourselves!
As I have aged, I have reflected on my oldest friendships, still valuing them despite the decades of rust that have intervened between (what has in most cases been) our spatially disparate lives. My attempts to reconnect with these old friends have sometimes led to disappointment, due to an asymmetry in our desires to reconnect, but in most others to a happy success.
Your line, "It turns out we are not the reliable friends you can count on to be there for you" made me think about my several friends in the "here and now." Each of them disappoints me at times, in certain small ways. This line of thought immediately makes me acknowledge to myself that I must fall short of their expectations, too. So, while I can, I treasure their company and kindnesses, letting the small stuff brush on by, and hope that they will do the same for me.
Thanks for stimulating these thoughts!