G3-Growing

Friendship

GROWING: A crone keeps growing emotionally and intellectually. Right now I am spending a lot of time thinking and reading about relationships, both those with people around us and those on the other side of the curtain. I want to understand what makes relationships work. I am also interested in learning about meditation.

As a crone, I advise young women to work at developing friendships with other women. The temptation is to put all your emotional energy into your husband and children especially if you work fulltime outside your home. Don’t do that.

Today I am interested in learning about friendships. My friendships are vitally important to me, and they are divided into two categories. First are the old friends. I treasure two women with whom I went to elementary school, women I’ve known for well over sixty years. The picture above is of Darlene and me in our matching Easter dresses when we were in seventh grade. I am on the left. Several years ago, I opened my eyes in the recovery room after brain surgery to see Darlene at the foot of my bed.  I told the nurse, “She has been with me on all the important occasions of my life except my birth, and that is only because I am one month older.” Last summer, Darlene and Charlene, my other close friend from early childhood, came to my house for an overnight visit. At this slumber party, we didn’t do hair or nails. No, we took each other’s blood pressure!

I am blessed by still getting to spend time with Sandra, whom I remember meeting on a day when I was fifteen and starting a new high school. A few years ago, Sandra made me a lovely quilt I keep on my bed. It was she who talked me into going to a high school reunion where I ran into John, the man to whom I am now married. I appreciate the quilt every day and the husband almost every day.

Most of my old friends, though, come from college days. I had the same roommate for four years, and I don’t recall ever having a real disagreement. What would my life have been like without Jan? There’s Beverly, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, and several others, people I became close to in the dorm and at the Baptist Student Union. When I think of my college friends I think of a verse from the King James Bible that says, “…the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David…”

I met Martha soon after college, and she was my attendant when I married Paul. Martha fixed my hair for my wedding day and held me up through the illness that ended with his burial thirty years after the marriage. I also have very close friends from my days as a teacher, whom I think of as buddies from the trenches. You always feel close to your pals from the army. Three of those women left work to be with me on the day Paul died. We continue to share our joys and sorrows.

That first group became my friends almost by accident because they were in my class at school , shared life in the dorm, taught next door or just down the hall. Still, there were other girls in my class, others in my college dorm, others who taught in my building. What made me connect with certain ones?  Why do some people come into our lives to become a BFF while others slip away?

My second group of friends is made up of writers. These women I chose more deliberately, sometimes inviting them to my home for an evenings of talking about writing or weekend working retreats. Still, I wonder what draws me to some in my profession more than others. I belong to a big writers’ organization, around 100 at the last meeting, some published and some aspiring to publications. They are great people, but we can’t all bond deeply. What in particular pulls people together?

Some of my close writer friends are a good deal younger than I am. Pati is one of those. Someone once suggested that Pati and I had a mother-daughter relationship. We don’t. In the first place, I was fourteen when Pati was born. At fourteen, I barely knew how girls got pregnant, certainly did not know why they would want to do such an act. Still, even with the ones who are young enough to be my daughters, I don’t generally feel motherly. So why are we friends?

Jeannie, who is near my age and a favorite buddy, says, “We have to hang around with these young women. Otherwise, there might be no one left alive to come to our funerals.” Jeannie makes me laugh, but there has to be more than preplanning for funerals behind these friendships

So please tell me. Can you explain why you bond with some people and not with others who are perfectly nice? Try to sum up what drew you to your best friend or friends. Just tell me about friendship. I am quite interested.