Friendships that flourish, thanks to our kids

Sunday was Tim's birthday. On his first birthday, I think I received as many congratulatory notes as he did, but now that he's fifteen, less of a deal is made even among other moms about the "mom-birthday." This year I heard from just one mom wishing me a happy Tim's-birthday. It was the mother who shared a hospital room with me during the two-day stay after Tim was born.

Later that day, I visited with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. Well, really only a few weeks, but it was that critical first-few-weeks-of-school, and we had a lot to catch up on: how high school was going so far for her son and for mine; a landscaping project she had tackled Labor Day weekend; what was new at her workplace. We became friends after our sons bonded in a fourth grade reading circle.

Last week I worked on a feature story about apple picking. Fishing around for a clever lead, I put the word out to a circle of contacts that I needed an apple-picking anecdote. The first person I heard back from was a mom I met in the mother-baby group that Tim and I started attending when he was three weeks old.

It all reminded me of how many friends of my own have come to me through my children: from the woman I shared a hospital room with through those mother-infant groups and into preschool and elementary school, from friendships forged while watching our kids play baseball to friendships forged over school volunteer projects.

When our children are born, it's fun to imagine them having friends of their own someday, but I don't think I realized how much of an effect Tim would eventually have on my own social life. His friends' parents are our friends. So are the parents of his teammates and classmates. We've met people we never would have crossed paths with if our kids hadn't enjoyed hanging out together.

This wasn't something I expected as a perk of parenthood. I thought I had enough friends earlier in adulthood, before kids were part of the picture. But I'm so grateful for all the new faces the kids have indirectly brought to our circle. It's a benefit of parenthood I didn't anticipate.

Later in the evening, during Tim's birthday party, I took a picture of him and his three guests. Then I emailed it to each of the kids' mothers. They all wrote back within the hour to thank me.

It was a picture of kids celebrating Tim's birthday. But to me, there was a subtext to the photo as well. It was a celebration of my own friendships: some of the ones I'm most grateful to have, and friendships I wouldn't have without Tim.

Time to talk

We talked about vacation plans. We talked about parent-teacher conferences. We talked about food allergies and orthodontia. We talked about the pros and cons of massage. We talked about iPhones and iPads. We talked about how to make risotto and how to dispute a property tax assessment.

With almost 48 hours, we had enough time to cover everything.

I feel so lucky to live in a small, closeknit community in which I have so many friends and acquaintances, but sometimes it seems every encounter is rushed. I run into local friends at school events, at the library, on the running path, in line at the post office….but so often there isn’t enough time for even a complete sentence, let alone a full conversation. And most of us have kids who are old enough now that we can’t blame them for the distraction: it’s not like in the playgroup days, when we couldn’t finish sentences because we were keeping our toddlers from scaling the bookshelf or rolling in a mud puddle. It’s just that we always have someplace else to be.

So when three friends and I planned our second annual springtime getaway weekend together, I counted on finally having time to finish some conversations, and start new ones.

It’s not that everything we discuss is so important. Far from it. Amy told us about her singing dentist. I described the calendar my grandparents had in their lakeside cottage. Recipes and book recommendations were exchanged.

But other conversations unspooled amidst the chatter as well: concerns about our children and parents; the fears and frustrations we encounter every day; ideas and hopes about our own futures.

It didn’t matter what we talked about. We had from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, and it was enough. I arrived back home early Sunday evening with the rare feeling of, for once, not having left any conversations half-finished.

It’s the second consecutive year the four of us have taken this trip. We’ll plan to do it again next year. By then there will be so much more to talk about: matters trivial and profound, uplifting and discouraging. There always is. In the twelve months until then, a lot of conversations will once again go unfinished. Yes, getting away for 48 hours is a huge luxury – and so is having enough time to talk and talk and talk. But it’s enough to know, or even just to hope, that in another year we’ll do it all again.

Reconnections

I didn’t intentionally hibernate this summer, but once the kids went back to school, I realized it had been months since I’d seen most of my local friends and acquaintances.

We live in a closeknit town, so that’s unusual. I typically run into people I know every time I go out to do errands. But over the summer, it’s different. People cycle in and out of vacation time and time at home during the summer; without the kids’ sports, I don’t run into their teammates’ parents at the field; and without school in session, we don’t run into each other at campus events the way we do during the school year.

Normally in September, it all changes. Sports seasons start up; bus stop conversations resume where they left off in the spring; and almost every year we attend a big annual party just after Labor Day at which I can count on seeing three hundred or so of my closest Carlisle acquaintances.

But now with both kids on the middle school schedule, I don’t have to stand in the pick-up area after school to retrieve them; nor do I stand at the bus stop with them in the morning. And I missed the big annual party because it coincided with Tim’s birthday celebration in Maine.

So by the time the third week of school began, I was feeling really out of the swing of things. I was starting to feel like I’d never catch up with everyone, never get through all the “Where did you go over the summer?” and “How did your kids like camp?” and “Who does your son have for kindergarten?” conversations.

Then it occurred to me that maybe it didn’t really matter that much. I do like catching up with people, but maybe it wasn’t as critical as I’d long assumed that I talk with three hundred of my closest friends about what they did over the summer and how their kids like school this year.

Once I realized that, it made me think about which friends I did most want to catch up with, and I acknowledged that there were several. So I started scheduling coffee dates. And dinner get-togethers. And weekend walks.

In the past five days I’ve had lunch with one friend, coffee with another and dinner with a third; this weekend we’re getting together with a family we all like, and on Sunday afternoon I’m going walking with another friend. Having to make the effort to reconnect with people has compelled me to prioritize a little bit, to recognize that while cocktail party chatter with three hundred people or so can certainly be fun, what’s really rewarding is to sit down over a meal or a cup of coffee with one friend and dig deep into what’s been going on.

So that seems to be the focus this fall: reconnecting with friends on a deeper level. Taking the time to find out what’s really happening in everyone’s lives. Not just “How was the trip to London?” but “What was the most surprising part of the trip?” Not just “Did your daughter have fun at camp?” but “How did you feel about seeing her leave home for the first time?”

I’m still hoping to catch up with lots of those other friends too, but I’m realizing there’s no rush. All the small talk and casual conversations will unfold over the course of another school year. At the moment, it’s more rewarding to find time for fewer people and longer conversations. It reminds me of why all these friendships matter so much to me in the first place.

 

Friendships after 30 -- not so challenging, at least around here

I thought this recent feature from the New York Times about how it’s more difficult to make friends after age 30 or so was interesting, and I enjoyed hearing the author of the article discuss the same topic on NPR’s Talk of the Nation a few days later, but the more I mull it over, the more I realize my experience is the opposite of his. I had wonderful friends in high school and college, but I have a lot more friends now, and the whole friendship thing seems easier somehow.

The New York Times staffer who wrote the story, Alex Williams, highlights two reasons he believes people over 30 make fewer friends. First of all, he says, there’s the time factor: he met a guy he got along with beautifully (a meeting that was apparently the inspiration for the article), but in the four years that followed, they managed to get together only four more times. It’s really hard to find time to cultivate friendships, in his eyes.

Also, he says that there are so many more players involved in developing a friendship at his age. He meets a guy whom he is certain he would have hung out with if they were in college together, but to spend time developing a friendship as over-30’s, the two men would have to determine that their wives and children all get along as well.

Though his explanations are well articulated and plausible, I’m glad that’s not the case for me. I feel like I have a much wider range of friends now than I did in my 20’s, and I think the primary reason is simply that our lives are more settled and everyone isn’t going off in so many different directions at once. When I was younger, it seemed that everyone I knew was developing a career, fitting in as much exotic travel as they could before the commitments of parenthood hit, and even devoting their non-travel leisure time to a rigorous schedule of small-scale adventures like training for a marathon, writing a screenplay, or applying to graduate school.

The fact is that now we’re all a little more boring. We’re all okay with beer and hamburgers on a Saturday afternoon rather than organizing a whitewater rafting excursion, and we’re all happy to stay close to home, so an invitation to a backyard barbeque from friends across town is suddenly more appealing than a weekend in New York City.

But it’s not just that we’re lazy or sedentary. Whereas Alex Williams feels that being a parent makes it more challenging to develop friendships, this is another aspect in which my experience has been the opposite of his. My children’s friends offer a wealth of social opportunities to my husband and me, and again, it’s about trading adventure for contentedness. If our kids get along with their kids, we’re perfectly happy to get together for pizza with another family even if the other couple might have found us too provincial or we might have found them too politically conservative back when we were all younger. Having children who play happily together is a major form of currency in our friendship circles these days.

Still, I don’t want to make it sound like this is about bonding with other parents merely out of playground boredom. Lots of the friends I’ve made in the past five years or so aren’t connected to me through my kids at all. One recent friendship was formed because a neighbor and I discovered we both walked to the post office at the same time most days. Other friends have come from church, volunteer groups or the poetry section at the library. What makes the most difference, it seems to me, is that we live in a small town. Once you’ve decided you like someone, it’s easy to run into them all the time.

Unfortunately, the converse seems to be true as well: I’ve made so many new friends by virtue of proximity, whether we meet up at Little League games, local campaign drives or our town’s Farmers Market, and yet as these friendships strengthen, I realize how difficult it is to maintain friendships long-distance. Some of my best friends from high school seem simply too far away to stay in touch with regularly. Even the casual friendship of our twenties, whereby it seemed sustainable to see another couple two or three times a year and to always drive a half-hour or more to get together, have pretty much fallen by the wayside.

I hope Alex Williams finds this to be true eventually as well. I’m guessing he’ll make plenty of friends in the upcoming years. Spend enough time watching the same kids frolic in the same ball pit at the same birthday parties and suddenly these people seem like your bosom buddies. And as for my high school friends, I’m just hoping some of them will move here eventually as well.

The privilege of helping friends

Monday evening after dinner, I browned some stew meat and onions in the crock pot, added peas, barley, potatoes, red wine, and spices. All night, the aroma of beef stew filled the house. In the morning, I poured the hot mixture into a foil pan and brought it to a friend’s house for the reception she was hosting following her mother’s memorial service.

Later in the morning, I worked on publicity materials for another friend who is about to open a gallery, and then after lunch I drove one of Tim’s friends to his orthodontist appointment because his mother was running late.

Yesterday may have had elements of "Be careful what you wish for," but I have to concede that this is precisely the kind of life I used to dream of having: one filled with friends. When we lived in a much larger town and I was working full-time, I didn’t have local friends. I waved to neighbors as we passed on the street, but no one ever asked me to help them with cooking or driving or publicity, and I never offered. I didn’t know anyone well enough.

Yesterday was a little busier than usual, but for the most part, it was a fairly typical day. A year ago, I was feeling overwhelmed with volunteer commitments and had to admit to myself that the functions I’d offered to fulfill didn’t feel fulfilling at all, so as guilty as it made me feel, I cut back on various institutional volunteering options.

It wasn’t that I was specifically thinking I’d redirect that same energy to personal friends, but that’s how it worked out. Since cutting back on formal volunteer work, I’ve found it so much easier to be generous with my time. I didn’t even realize how concrete a difference it was until I read something I wrote in a journal about a year ago: “Maybe once I give up some of these responsibilities that I’m finding so onerous, I’ll enjoy seeing people again rather than finding it a burden every time someone drops by.”

I’d forgotten how starkly I’d come to resent the very same people I enjoy most, simply because I’d taken on too much.

And although it’s hard to objectively defend the choice to make stew for a friend’s memorial service rather than serve food at a soup kitchen, it seems to be the more enriching choice for me right now. I’m not sure which is ultimately more important: to be a good citizen or a good friend. I can’t say with certainty that I’m doing the right thing by letting myself focus on personal connections instead of the greater good.

But I end the day feeling grateful for the presence of friends and grateful for the opportunities to help them out, knowing they have done and will again do the same for me when the circumstances require it. It’s not necessarily a rational choice. But it’s one that feels instinctively right. And sometimes, that’s the best you have to go on.

They really really (don't) like me

A good friend and I were having one of those conversations that you can have only with someone who really is a good friend: we each disclosed the names of people we were certain didn’t like us and what evidence we had.

What sparked this particular discussion was something I’d received earlier in the day by email. It was an essay by the late Erma Bombeck titled “If I Had My Life to Live Over,” and although for the most part it was inspiring, I told my friend that there was one point I disagreed with: the one in which she wrote “Don't worry about who doesn't like you.”

“I actually do think it’s worthwhile to pay attention to people who don’t like you,” I admitted. “In fact, I think I’ve made some very beneficial course corrections over the years based on the awareness that someone didn’t seem to like me, after considering why that may be and whether they might be justified.”

And that’s true. It’s not like I run into people all the time from whom I get a negative vibe, but it does happen once in a while, and if it’s someone I have fairly regular interactions with, I really do find it useful to think back as to why that may be the case. More often than not, I can think of a comment I may have made that wasn’t necessarily very kind-spirited, or a dismissive act related to them, or a time I was simply self-absorbed or self-aggrandizing in their presence.

“But aren’t there some people who just seem to not like you for no reason at all?” my friend argued. “What if you really can’t think of a good reason? Or the reason you come up with just doesn’t make sense?”

I agreed that sometimes this is the case, and there's always something to be said for accepting the things we cannot change. Sometimes you just have to realize you can’t please everyone. But those times when I’ve recognized the validity of someone else’s negative responses to me, it’s been valuable: even if I can’t erase what I’ve done, I can avoid making the same mistake in the future. I can be more careful not to be catty or dismissive or self-aggrandizing again.

I still have a vivid memory of being eight years old and riding in the back seat of my friend Julie’s family’s station wagon. This was in the days when kids were still allowed to ride in the cargo area behind the back seat, and that’s where my friend’s 6-year-old sister and her friend were positioned when I heard the sister’s friend whisper, “Do you like Julie’s friend?” The other 6-year-old made some kind of affirmative comment and then the first little girl spoke again. “Well, I don’t! She has curly hair! Yuck!”

You’d think this would be a traumatic memory, but even at the age of eight I realized the ridiculousness of it. Curly hair? The quintessential thing-I-could-do-nothing-about, and even at that young age I realized there was no point it letting this kind of prejudice bother me.

So, with all due respect to the beloved essayist Erma Bombeck and her generally trenchant points about living life fully, I would disagree with her on this one, at least partially. Do pay attention to people who don’t like you. Give them their fair due. Think about whether their attitude may reflect a weakness on your part that you can correct.

And if not, or if you do correct it and it doesn’t seem to help, accept that fact and move on. Focus on people who do seem to like you, and learn from them what you’re doing right. Everyone can’t like everyone. Trust me. We curly-haired girls learn fast.

Sharing, including everyone: Do the principles we espouse when they're 7 still make sense at 40?

Earlier this year, my seven-year-old daughter Holly talked to me about a schoolyard problem she was experiencing.

Holly’s problem was, as I understood it, simply that she was a little bewildered by the revolving-door aspect of girls’ friendships. She has a lot of friends, and although she’s definitely closer to some than others, I’ve long encouraged her to play with many different kids for just the reason that she is now encountering: sometimes a girl who seemed to be your best friend one day wants to play with someone else the next.

I don’t consider this bullying or meanness. No one was deliberately excluding anyone else. At worst, they were being fickle; or to put a less negative spin on it, they were seeking variety in their recess encounters. I can’t fault any of the girls for it, but it was confusing to Holly, who felt that even with a dozen or more girls at school whom she considers good friends, she should still be able to count on playing Tuesday with the same friend she played with on Monday.

Her teacher, who has plenty of experience in the ways of second-grade girls and was remarkably willing to do what she could to nip incipient problems in the bud, went way beyond the call of duty in confronting this problem when I sought her insights. She invited all the girls in her class to a weekly lunch club where they could talk about friendship strategies. Her discussions with the girls have focused on the importance of not leaving anyone out, confirming my sense that no child was guilty of being unkind, just negligent, likely without realizing it. If there was anything at all to identify as a fault, it was one of omission, not commission.

But as Holly and her classmates talked about how it’s more fun to include everyone, I couldn’t help feeling a sneaking sense of hypocrisy that I sometimes get when I find myself encouraging my kids to uphold standards that I don’t feel I’m held to myself. This was a big issue for me when my older child, Tim, was three or four and we talked about sharing. I just couldn’t help thinking about how the way we expect small children to play together is not exactly something adults would be comfortable with for themselves. Even while I’d be saying to Tim, “Give Ryan a turn with your tricycle,” I’d think to myself how odd it would be if Ryan’s mom asked to take my car out for a spin or use my iPod. I’d say yes, of course. It wouldn’t be a problem; it would just be unusual. And yet we expect kids to be generous with their toys all the time.

A few years after going through his own tribulations associated with sharing and playgroups, Tim would sometimes come home from school to see one of Holly’s friends playing with his train set or nerf football. I’d urge him not to see make a fuss over it, but I couldn’t help thinking that it would be a little awkward if, say, my husband came home from work and found one of my friends sitting at his desk using his computer.

Now that both kids are in grade school, the sharing of material goods isn’t so much of an issue for them. These days when they have friends over to play, it’s usually with the goal of enjoying a toy or activity together, rather than avoiding that. But with Holly’s friendship challenges, I find myself again comparing my expectations of her with my expectations of myself. If every single time I wanted to talk to my friend Nicole over a cup of coffee I was required to include a half-dozen other acquaintances in the conversation, I wouldn’t be too happy about it. When I visit with Nicole or any of my close friends, I value the one-on-one time. It’s not the same when someone else shows up unexpectedly. We’d never leave anyone out, but it’s only fair to admit I wouldn’t expect to enjoy the visit as much.

On the other hand, when I hear that a couple my husband and I enjoy spending time with is going to someone else’s house for dinner, I don’t usually feel slighted. At this point it’s just second nature to me to see that if you’re fortunate, you have a range of different friends and enjoy their company at different times.

So maybe it’s not a matter of different standards as much as learning lessons now that will help them later. As I tell Holly, it’s good to have a wide variety of friends so that you never feel left out if any one friend doesn’t want to play with you. It’s just as true for me now as it is for her; the only real difference is that I’ve had a lot more years to learn it.

My son had a sleepover - and I got a good night's sleep

I’m starting the work week well-rested and cheerful. The house is neat, the bathrooms are clean, the refrigerator is stocked, my patience is untried.

This is notable only because my 11-year-old son invited three friends to a sleepover this weekend. It was an event I approached somewhat grudgingly, knowing that two months after his birthday we owed him some kind of celebration but still not genuinely enthusiastic about the plan to fill up his room with fifth grade boys for the night.

I worried that they’d be loud and messy and rude – not because any of these particular boys has ever shown any of these qualities to me, but because I had an innate wariness about combining that many male tweens and being responsible for them for eighteen hours.

But I needn’t have worried. Beyond not being any trouble, it was a delight to spend time with the four of them together. They played football in the driveway. My husband took them bowling and out for pizza. They played pool in our attic, raved about the ice cream pie I served after dinner, were kind (or at least exhibited an absence of unkindness) to Holly, played Wii into the wee hours, went to bed at the agreed-upon time (11, so not a huge sacrifice, but still), slept until 7, woke cheerful, raved about the pancakes and bacon I made for breakfast, trooped out to the barnyard to help me feed the cows and let out the sheep, worked on making a poster together, and packed their stuff up when it was time to leave.

They are great boys, and my son is so lucky to have such kind friends. Holly has wonderful friends too, and I feel fortunate on both of their behalves. So much rides upon the question of who your child makes friends with – and there’s so little a parent can do about it. Worst-case scenarios can have unthinkably awful consequences, but even middling scenarios can keep a parent awake at night, stressing out over a child’s dangerous liaisons. My children have both been lucky enough to find peers who are thoughtful, self-disciplined and generous.

That’s not to say we won’t face any friendship problems going forward. Tim already seems to be quite effective at deciding whom he wants to hang out with and whom he wants to stay away from, but Holly is immersed in more of a typical girlhood, and no doubt there will be drama along the way. In fact, I fully admit it’s likely she’ll be the one causing the drama sometimes. I try to teach her to be a good friend, but as Rosalind Wiseman writes about in Queen Bees and Wannabes, girls find their way into a quagmire of social issues despite our best intentions.

Be that as it may, right now I’m still ensconced in a cheerful glow from our wonderful weekend with Tim’s friends. They played outside; they left the bathroom neat; they didn’t keep anyone else awake at night. They complimented my cooking. (Ice cream pie and pancakes: you could argue that those are two can’t-misses, but still. They could have eaten and kept silent rather than complimenting.) Almost every day I feel grateful for my own kids. Today I feel additionally grateful for the terrific kids with whom my children surround themselves.

Old friends, new friends, happy weekend

I’m feeling awash in friendship after this past weekend, suffused with a warm glow of having spent Saturday morning with new friends, Sunday evening with old(ish) friends, and time in between with church friends.

On Saturday morning, we invited a family new to town over for brunch. Sometimes those invitations work out really well and other times you end up feeling like at least you did the right thing by making an effort. This was an example of the former. The new family has a daughter in Holly’s class (which is how we met them) as well as two younger children, and all five were lovely guests. They appreciated our cooking and hosting; all the kids got along well together; they asked politely inquisitive questions of us and shared interesting information about themselves. (And, okay, they’d read my blog before coming over. So maybe that’s the real reason I liked them so much right away. But the two hours that followed their arrival didn’t disappoint either.)

On Sunday evening, a family in town well-known for their generosity in hosting huge crowds and letting enormous hordes of children run through their house invited lots of people over. It was all local families, and as is so often the case at big local get-togethers, I was struck by the extent to which everyone brought something to the table. Not literally: the hosts did all the work (“Well, it’s not as if I entertain the way you do!” my friend said on the phone that morning when I called to ask what I could bring. “This will be spaghetti with Ragu and maybe some garlic bread.” Well, yeah, but there was chocolate fondue for dessert, with not only fruit but also pretzels and marshmallows for dipping.).

But everyone who was there had something interesting to say; conversations mushroomed all over the house that were well worth listening in on. One couple had just returned from a cold, rainy Head of the Charles regatta, where they saw a rower treated for hypothermia. Another told me about how fortunate she and her husband felt about the success of their year-old start-up. A man who gives generously of his time to committees all over town updated me on the school building project. A man I hadn’t met before – the only family at the party I didn’t already know – explained to me the finer points of the town’s wastewater treatment plant. A mom discussed her 17-year-old daughter’s college search to date. A couple of parents weighed in on the school instrument program and whether my son should try out for symphonic band. Two football games played on the TV: we had Jets fans, Buffalo fans and Patriots fans all cheering their teams on. The kids played on their own all evening, needing nothing from us adults once dinner was over, and I felt so fortunate to be in the company of interesting people whom I’ve known for so long, many of them since Tim started kindergarten five years ago, a few even longer.

When people new to town comment to me on how friendly everyone is, I always offer the same explanation. “In a town without restaurants, movie theaters, bowling alleys, nightclubs or any commercial diversions whatsoever, all we have is each other,” I always say. “If we don’t reach out and get together, we’d all be bored silly.” Last night was a good example. By 5 PM, the cold rain that had fallen all afternoon had turned into a wet snow. No one felt like driving farther than across town, but we didn’t need to. Within town lay a house brimming with fun for the kids, enlightenment and good conversation for the adults, and pasta (plus chocolate) all around.

Whether my theory about socializing in Carlisle is correct or not, I’m so lucky to live in a small town where it’s easy to make friends, and it’s so rewarding to be starting the work week on a wave of goodwill inspired by the good times we had with friends old and new over the weekend.