Friends

Different houses, different kinds of friendship. There are old friends, new friends, vacation friends, closest friends, distant-and-that’s-perfectly-fine friends, friends we talk to for hours every day about nothing, mom friends, school friends. And of course, there is some overlap between the groups, sometimes quite a lot. What’s interesting is how our relationships change from year to year, how someone can go from being a distant acquaintance to a best friend, and how a best friend can become a distant acquaintance.

When we were children, everyone had a best friend with whom they were practically inseparable, sharing everything and knowing more about each other than their own families did. As they grew older, they spent more and more time together, fantasizing together - this was mostly true of girls... - about what it would be like to meet “the one,” what it would be like to have a family, and what it would be like to finally be grown-ups and be allowed to “do anything” (those adorable childhood dreams, right...).

Then the time came when they grew up. They got nervous together before their first dates, planned the names of their future children together after the dates, and cried together when it turned out that perhaps it wasn’t worth dreaming about a wedding after just one week, because it was never going to happen (at least not with their current great love).

They went through all of this together, as well as the time when the truly great love finally arrived, and the wedding really did happen. Then something happened, and they noticed that they no longer talked every day and no longer knew as much about each other’s lives as they once had. Or perhaps they didn’t even notice; the months simply passed, and they kept putting off meeting because something always came up. Eventually, when they met, they were surprised to realize that years of their lives had passed without truly missing each other - at least not for more than a few minutes at a time.

The birth of children is generally one such turning point in a friendship. At first, the one who doesn’t yet have children visits the one who has just had a baby, brings increasingly amazing gifts, and they admire the beautiful little newborn, while secretly envying each other. The new parent envies the other person’s freedom, while the one with more freedom envies the baby-scented everyday life. (This isn’t inevitable. There are plenty of people who don’t envy the new mother for even a moment and instead put off starting a family of their own for years.)

We notice that we would rather call the friends who are going through the same things we are. We can talk things over with them because we feel they better understand why our baby doesn’t sleep, what they should be eating, or why they still aren’t talking.

Sometimes it occurs to us that we should introduce our old friend to our new one, but in reality we don’t feel like it. This may change a little once everyone has a family, but not necessarily.

Then we get through the first more difficult years with the children. They start preschool and school, and perhaps there is a brief opening where we can return to our old friends - but it soon closes. We become surrounded by people whose children get along so well with ours, and we get along with the parents too. So when we plan a vacation or a barbecue, we invite them instead, because that way everyone benefits. The children play, while the adults do whatever they want. Ideal.

After all, we see them more often than most of our relatives. We worry about the same things concerning the children, go through the same experiences, and on top of that, we do so in the same places. This certainly doesn’t mean that the only thing connecting us to our new friends is the children. Perhaps at first we only talked about the preschool cafeteria, but as we met every day, willingly or not, we became part of each other’s lives.

The feeling slowly creeps back - if it returns at all - that it would be good to see again the friends who knew us “before.” The ones who watched us grow up and saw our happiest and saddest moments. Because sometimes we can miss who we used to be, and we can also miss the person who confirms that we existed before our children. At times like that, even a simple phone call can feel wonderful, and for true good friends, it takes only minutes to pick up the thread of each other’s lives and continue where they left off.

But sometimes, after a certain amount of time has passed, we realize that we don’t miss someone, that we only write to them out of politeness at Christmas or on their birthday, and that we don’t even care if they don’t reply. Some friendships have an expiration date, and no matter how many beautiful or good memories connect us, we no longer want to remain in contact. In fact, it may be that if we met them for the first time today, we would never become friends.

Hopefully, that is less common.

Because we need friends - surely that won’t surprise anyone. We need someone outside our family with whom we can share our thoughts; someone to call when we have a free hour and would like to have a coffee or a glass of wine with them. Just as we feel reassured when our children have their own little circle of friends, we too need to have people with whom we can be carefree. The more of them we have, the luckier we are!