Making Friends at Any Age
I’m not sure what it is about the holidays that makes me particularly reflective over life in general. I suppose it’s because I tend to look back at where I was a year ago, five years ago, etc. It seems like so much time has passed- and yet not at all. I didn’t realize it had been two years since my friend Alex had his annual Turkey Party… two years lost to Covid.
It makes me think about all of the friends who have come and gone at various points in my life. Somehow the friends I have been closest to always tend to move away: Melanie, Roger, Floco, Courtney, Clare, Stacey… and the list goes on.
It’s kind of sad to have to start over again with friendships, it’s not much different starting over for a romantic relationship. Will I find someone so easy to talk to again? Will I need to explain the clutter of my home?
I’ve been lucky that over the past year or so I’ve reconnected with my two oldest friends, Jessica and Becki. Friends that I can pick back up with just as easily as if there had not been a large passage of time. It’s a reminder in some ways of my age- 40. Newly 40. I really thought I’d have my life a little bit better together by this point in time. Thought I’d be remarried well before now for sure- I’ve been officially divorced more than ten years. I am finally finding my grounding in my career teaching at Georgia College- a place I can see myself staying for the rest of my life, if I am so lucky. (Let’s all say a collective prayer that I get a contract extension!)
And then I see my grandmother, a woman in her late 90’s, who is also having to start over again in a big way. We recently moved her to the new Alexander IV retirement community. My grandfather passed away not long before my daughter was born- she will be 13 this January. Thirteen years my grandmother has lived in her home without my grandfather, doing incredibly well through it all. But things happen and it was time to be in a place that required less work, and where she could have more one on one attention when needed.
When I visit her she has a crew of people she introduces me to, and she will be engaged in lively dinner time conversation. She has had to start over and make friends herself, and it makes me smile. I think so often it’s easy to think that life is set right where we are, that some kind of future is bleak- if there’s one at all. My grandmother has started over again at very nearly 100 years of age and is thriving through it. I’m not sure why the unknown at age 40 is scary to me, and her spirit moving through it is an inspiration. This means I’m not even at the halfway point of my life- and I’ve still got plenty of time to make it exactly as I want it to be… with many more friends to make, and more to keep, all along the way.
