Back in the social swing

The Carlisle social season is back in full swing.

In places like Miami Beach and the Hamptons, kicking off the social season looks a lot different from here, or at least that’s what I infer from photos and articles. Designer dresses, charity balls, black tie banquets.

Here in Carlisle, the social season – at least from my perspective – began this week with a school fundraiser at a pizza restaurant on Tuesday evening followed by the third grade meet-and-greet first thing Wednesday morning, which segues into the introductory Room Parent meeting and, later this month, the ski-barn barbeque.

Yes, these events are decidedly dress-down rather than dress-up, but they still serve to pull a very large group of friends and acquaintances – comprising essentially every parent of school-aged children in town who has any interest in being involved in any aspect of community life – together after a long summer during which we all went in different directions.

And I was dreading it. I really was. All throughout August, I experienced twinges of something that felt a little like agoraphobia, not exactly fear of crowded places but fear of resuming my usual social customs: greeting, connecting, schmoozing. Despite the fact that mingling with a large and extended version of my cohort makes up the bulk of my social life, I found myself retreating this summer to the point where I feared the time of year that we all start getting out again. I felt socially drained, as if I’d lost all interest in catching up with old friends and meeting people new to town.

But I’m relieved to say that the events are back under way and it turns out I’m not afraid of crowds after all. I guess I just needed a break. Last night, the kids and I went to a school fundraiser at a pizza restaurant – held in a neighboring town because Carlisle doesn’t have any restaurants – and though it was the kind of scene I’d feared all summer, after five minutes I was basking in the noise and commotion.

I asked a friend’s husband about how his running program was going and heard from another friend about how she selected a new puppy for her kids. I learned a few details about a local family’s six-month stay in South America, from which they’d just returned. I met a family who moved to town last month, having lived all over the U.S. and Europe, and asked about their impressions of Carlisle. I answered thoughtful inquiries about my family and our summer vacation. I talked about work with some people and about the middle school faculty with others.

A woman I was sitting with at the pizza dinner who moved to town over the summer commented on how friendly everyone had been to her ever since she arrived in Carlisle. “Almost Stepford-like,” she said, but I gave her my usual explanation of my theory about why people in Carlisle are so friendly. “Hanging out with each other is all we can do,” I said. “We don’t have theaters or restaurants or nightclubs or concert venues or even coffee shops. Our entire social life, at least within city limits, consists of socializing with each other. If we weren’t friendly, there would be absolutely nothing to do at all.”

Which doesn’t explain my retreat into mild agoraphobia over the summer, a time during which I didn’t want to do any socializing at all and feared the prospect of resuming the usual schedules in the fall. But I’m relieved that it’s passed, and I’m finding it wonderfully rewarding to be talking and catching up and sharing information with a wide and ever-growing circle of acquaintances once again.

It’s good to have friends. It’s good to be part of the crowd. But retreating can be a comfort too. So maybe what I was doing wasn’t so much hiding as hibernating. Summer hibernating, in my case. I needed to recharge my conviviality batteries and maybe just have some time when I wasn’t quite so focused on interacting with other people. It felt good to retreat for a couple of months, and even better now to want to be back in the thick of the conversations. Sometimes nothing informs us more effectively than listening to our own inner rhythms, whether they are telling us about our need for food, water, sleep, exercise, solitude….or yes, society.