Friendship as I Get Older

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I'm approaching 40 and friendship has been sitting on my mind more than I expected it to.

When you're a kid, you go to the playground, see someone, and ask if they want to be your friend. That's it. Kids make it look so effortless. No vetting process. No scheduling conflicts. No wondering if your lives will still make sense in five years.

Then you grow up and suddenly friendship requires two weeks' notice.

Meeting new people as an adult can be its own kind of awkward. Every conversation seems to go the same way. What do you do. Are you married. What does your partner do. Do you have kids. Where do they go to school. You walk away knowing someone's entire family schedule and almost nothing about who they actually are. Somewhere under all that small talk is someone interesting. You're both just too tired to get there.

I've lost friends along the way. Some drifted. Some ended in that awkward tension nobody ever fully addresses. A few just quietly stopped making sense as we grew into different people, or into different chapters.

It's easier when you're both raising toddlers. Playdates count as socializing. You're both exhausted in the same specific way. Then someone's kids get older, or someone goes back to work, or someone moves, and the thing that held it together was mostly logistics.

I used to trace it back, wonder what I did wrong, replay moments I could have handled differently. I don't do that anymore.

I have a mom, sisters and sisters-in-law who are my favorite people. I have friends nearby and scattered across the world who I don't talk to nearly enough, but when we do connect it picks right back up. My husband is my best friend. He'd also be the first to tell you he cannot replace a girlfriend who wants to dissect a conversation for forty-five minutes.

My parents keep joking that I'm going to turn into my mémère. My dad's mom. Quiet, content, perfectly happy with a simple life. She was a total homebody. Never left the house much and genuinely didn't seem bothered by that at all. They say it like it's a warning but I'm starting to take it as a compliment.

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I'm the sixth of twelve kids. There was never a quiet room. Someone was always talking, always around, always needing something. From the time I was born, my whole world was people. I spent so much of my life being social, showing up, pouring out, always available.

But somewhere along the way I changed. I'm more inward now. I want my people close, my circle small, and my couch very, very accessible.

Some evenings the plan is nothing. That took me a long time to be fine with. Most nights it looks like these eye masks, the couch, and nowhere to be.

When Mémère would visit, she'd walk around the yard looking at the flowers and trees. Slowly. Just taking it all in. I remember watching her as a kid thinking that was the strangest thing. Why would you just walk around looking at plants. What is happening right now.

I now walk around my own yard and other people's yards looking at the flowers and trees.

Walking the yard, noticing what's blooming, sitting outside with tea or the occasional coffee. That resets me more than almost anything else these days.

And if my other best friend at this point in my life is a tree, so be it. We don't talk much, but it's a very low maintenance relationship and I respect that.

Mémère was onto something the whole time.

Friendship looks different now than I thought it would. Quieter. Smaller. Some days that feels like enough. Some days you still wish it didn't take a calendar invite and three reschedules to get coffee with someone you genuinely like.

And if I end up a homebody who barely leaves the house or the yard, well... Mémère seemed pretty happy to me. :)