This past week I had lunch with my friend, Sue, both of us temporarily free of schedules that left little time for midday socializing. Sue was my “first” friend when I moved to San Diego seven and a half years ago. We’d met in Berkeley, when she attended my summer class on writing as a way of healing. A gifted writer, her essays on her experience as a mother of a son fighting a war in Afghanistan, published in the , Christian Science Monitor, earned her a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. I knew none of that then, but when she learned I was relocating that fall, she followed up with a welcoming email and an essay she’d written about the San Diego area. When I arrived that fall, she called and took me to an art show, featuring several local artists, some I soon got to know personally.
Sue and I lingered over lunch, recalling my first year in San Diego. “I still think of you as a new friend,” she said, as we laughed over shared likes and dislikes.
“Oh no,” I said, “I’m an old friend now. It’s been more than seven years…”
“Has it been that long?” I nodded; it had. Time had, once again, flown by.
Our conversation turned to the topic of friends, losing them and gaining new ones in all my many moves from California to Canada to New York, Washington and back to California. Now as my husband and I consider a possible return, at least for half our time, to Canada, I admitted to Sue that I have mixed feelings–all because of friends.
“It’s more difficult to make new friends with each move,” I sighed.
Besides, I am well aware that as we get older, it’s friends—the ones who know you well–who make a place feel like home. Like Bette Midler sang, we all need friends.
…you got to have friends.
The feeling’s oh so strong.
You got to have friends
To make that day last long.
Despite our many moves, I’ve been lucky with friends. Two weeks ago, Sharon, a friend from graduate school days, traveled west from New Hampshire to spend the weekend with us before heading to Silicon Valley to visit her son. She and I were close during our doctoral study years, both of us single parents who’d elected to go back to school later in life. In fact it was Sharon who first introduced me to John, who would, a few years later, become my husband. Despite years apart and sometimes scant communication, she and I quickly fell into our old rhythms during her visit, shared conversations and long walks. She remains as dear to me now as she was all those many years ago.
In two weeks, my daughter and granddaughter will be here, and Lynn, whom I met while in high school, will drive from Claremont to visit. Lynn was always “Aunt Lynn” to my daughters, a constant presence in our lives, whether we lived in Nova Scotia, Toronto or California. It hardly mattered. Our friendship endured our mutual moves around the continent and periods of great physical distance between us over the years. A phone call to Lynn was always enthusiastically received, and within a minute or two, we’d be laughing.
“The good thing about friends,” a poem by Brian Jones begins, “is not having to finish sentences” (“About Friends,” in The Spitfire on the Northern Line,1975). Do you know that feeling? It’s something I experience with Lynn, Sharon, or Sue, all among my dearest and most enduring friends. Whenever we manage to pick up the telephone or meet, we’re laughing together within minutes in a conversation punctuated by unfinished sentences. It’s a particular comfort shared with enduring friends, ones who know you by heart, who you’ve shared so much of life with and despite time and distance, can still pick up the conversation where it left off, even though you’ve not seen one another for months , sometimes years.
Friends matter in all kinds of ways. They are important in helping us fight illness or depression. They help us recover from illness, trauma and loss. They celebrate our good times and offer support during the tough times. They keep us from feeling lonely. They often become closer than family, and they raise our spirits and keep us laughing. No wonder friends are important in slowing down our aging process and prolonging life. As Gail Caldwell describes finding a special friend in Let’s Take the Long Way Home, a story of her long friendship with author Gail Knapp, it’s “like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived..”
It was those enduring friendships I thought about this morning, grateful as I remembered each person’s face, their roles in my life, and knowing how much richer my life has been because of them. Whatever and wherever my husband and I plan for our next chapter in life, I know that there are a handful of people whose friendships that will endure no matter what.
I remember the little round learned as a Brownie Scout so long ago:
Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver and the other’s gold.
Think about friends or friendship this week and try writing about them. Here are a few suggestions. Describe a first meeting of a dear friend or a time when you discovered a friend in someone you never thought would become so close to you. Tell how a friend has helped you through a difficult time. Write a praise poem about a friend or friends. Was there a time you lost a dear friend? Write about that. If you had to write a definition of friendship, what would it include? What qualities matter most to you in a friend?
Through darkness, cold, and snow,
Wherever you may go,
You bear my friendship true, you bear my friendship true.
(“Blow, blow thou winter wind,” by Anonymous)
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