Friendships Through the Seasons of Life

 People make friends at different times in their lives. If you’re lucky—and if you take the time to nurture those friendships—some of them can last a lifetime.

I have friends from elementary school, middle school and high school. I have college friends, career friends, neighborhood friends, the mothers of my children’s friends, yoga friends—and the list goes on. Each friendship belongs to a different part of my story. Some friends knew me when I was young and still trying to figure out who I was. Others came into my life through work, marriage, motherhood or shared interests.

Jeanne, my sister Barbara and me

 in our early 20s

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with one of my high school friends, Jeanne. We maintained our friendship after graduation, through our twenties and after our children were born. Now that I am living close to where I grew up, we have picked up where we left off.

That is one of the gifts of a longtime friendship. You may not see each other regularly, but when you are together, the years seem to fall away. There is a shared history that doesn’t need to be explained. You remember the same people and places, and sometimes you remember things about one another that each of you has forgotten.

During our early and middle adult years, it can be difficult to keep friendships fresh. Careers, families and the responsibilities of maintaining a home can all get in the way. At the end of the day, exhaustion sets in, and the call you meant to make gets put off. One missed call becomes several, and suddenly months—or even years—have passed.

But a quiet friendship is not necessarily a lost friendship. Sometimes it is simply waiting for life to make room for it again.

Friendships do require nurturing, but that doesn’t always mean constant contact. Sometimes it is a phone call, a birthday card, a shared memory or a message that says, “I was thinking about you.” It is letting someone know that even though life is busy, they still matter.

As we get older, I think we appreciate these connections in a different way. The people who have traveled alongside us—whether for a few years or most of a lifetime—help us remember the many versions of ourselves we have been.

Jeanne, Barbara and me recently
Yesterday, Jeanne and I weren’t simply two women spending an afternoon together. We were also the girls we once were, the young mothers we became and the women we are today.

How fortunate we are when a friendship can hold all those versions of us.

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