Girlfriends

Girlfriends,

This is my grandmother Lucy and her best friend Eleanor. They met as neighboring young brides with growing families when they both lived for a short time in Rockville, Maryland. More kids arrived, jobs changed and they both moved away. Jobs continued to change and children grew up. About fifteen years later, they found themselves living as neighbors again – and this is where they’d each remain – in Annapolis, Maryland. Over the years, they shared crab feasts, backyard BBQs, family birthday parties, boat trips on the Chesapeake Bay, bridge games, books and conversation…lots and lots of conversation. They held each other as each of their husbands passed away and when their own bodies began to fail in different ways, they supported and cheered each other on through medical scares and adjustments. This year, they separately moved into the same retirement home so they could get extra care and that meant they got to see each other at meals, Bingo and sometimes just for a quiet afternoon chat. Turned out, though, that my grandmother Lucy, the younger of the two, needed a little more care than that home provided so she recently moved into a skilled nursing home an hour’s drive away. They are both in their late 90s; this picture is their goodbye hug before Lucy moved out – likely their last goodbye.

Oh, that I should be so lucky to keep my girlfriends as close as Lucy and Eleanor were able to keep each other. I’m only 44 and I’ve all but finished raising my kids. The days of meeting other moms on the Saturday morning soccer sideline are done. Those long sunny Friday afternoons playing in the street that rolled into two families heating up all the week’s leftovers we had in the fridge, laying them on a shared table and calling it “Picka-Picka,” are finished. No more, You take the kids after school today and I will take them tomorrow exchanges, or Can you take my kids out for ice cream tonight because I have to work and am worried about leaving them on their own. Now, girlfriend time is just that – time I can spend alone with my girlfriends.

I’ve started listening to a new podcast series by one of my favorite writers, Jen Hatmaker. Her podcast, “For the Love,” began with a series called, “For the Love of Girlfriends.” As I walked my dog in the rain this morning, I heard Jen say into my ear buds, “I invest heavily in my girlfriends.”

I felt tears spring up as her words landed somewhere tender in me. Because, I. Love. My. Girlfriends. That same tender spot was activated a few weeks ago when my business coach ventured a little more into life coaching. She asked me to think of this upcoming work season and consider all I wanted to achieve and receive and try to boil it down to one word that could serve as an intention. “Friendship,” I answered. “I want to lean into my gift of friendship.” “Joy,” she replied, “You are friendship – it’s what you do naturally. What you are saying is you want to be more of your true self this season.” YES! It turns out, my Girlfriends, we are linked in my heart. To be a better me, I need to be a better friend to you.

Life, though, with its supersonic speedy ride, throws so much in the path of “investing heavily.” I need more sleep than ever before and the older I get, the more time I seem to need to regroup alone. The extroverted me is asking, who is this new introvert moving in? I need more time to spend with my parents and my almost-adult children, and my marriage – like all the other ones – is an organic force that needs care and tending as well. Plus, I work, like, all the time and run out of hours and energy every day. How can I slice a fatter pie piece called friendship?

I’ve learned from moving abroad, and by traveling constantly, that it’s real work to maintain friendships and that work has to be taken seriously. Similar to the work of marriage, it’s best and most successfully done when both parties believe it’s 100% their job to do the reaching-out and initiating. Anybody waiting around for a text, or thinking, “You know, I am always the one to call. Let’s see how long it takes her to call me this time,” is sunk. Memories are too faulty for us to play those tit-for-tat games. I am “here two weeks and gone for two months” in most of the friendships I currently have, and those are with the friends I am lucky enough to live near or visit regularly. My Lucy- and Eleanor-style friends – the ones I’ve nurtured for many years – I see once in a blue moon as I’m passing through a city nearby, or we schedule a long Face Time catch-up when we can. One of my besties and I trade lengthy emails often, and when we reply, we interrupt each other’s paragraphs with different colored fonts so that it reads like we are interjecting into a live conversation. Another friend takes me grocery shopping or does it for me if I cannot tag along. While I was typing this, she dropped off two bags and we stood outside my gate laughing so hard at random things that we had tears streaming. Just after she pulled away she sent a message, “That was just what I needed today,” and of course it was soul-lifting for me too. Another friend leaves me voicemails regularly and asks “How can I best pray for you today?” Another lives five hours from where my eldest is experiencing a hurricane from her college dorm room and texted last night to say, “Can I go scoop her up?” When I was in labor with that child I passed that friend’s apartment and my husband stopped and beeped during a contraction. Our connections runs deep.  Another makes eyebrow-threading appointments for me whenever I am in her town – even if we are off schedule from each other. She just comes to sit with me while I do the upkeep because she recognizes how busy I am and what a gift the hour of conversation is to me. Recently a friend moved into my home for a few weeks as she transitions to a new life and she makes me laugh every single day, usually through bitmogi. She’s a bitmogi ninja. Three other friends book a lunch reservation together whenever I can come. I know they cancel plans and move things around and always go to my favorite places because I don’t live in their town anymore and they know I miss the food and their company so much. I can’t begin to list the friends who have opened their guestrooms or kicked their kids out of bedrooms to host me overnight or overweek during the last four years – it’s too many to number. Investing heavily can look a lot of different ways, and I am a lucky gal.

I don’t have high standards for friendship, honestly. At least not in the beginning – I’ll give almost any woman a chance to see if we have the spark. This has been a useful mindset through an international move for sure, but it’s enhanced my entire life. Obviously it doesn’t work out with everyone, but it has afforded me a *very* diverse set of friends. Random ages, with/without kids, married and single girlfriends, various or no religions, working and non-working, American and everything else. It stays interesting.

Here’s what I look for in a friendship that will stand the test of time:

The Best of You. I don’t need you to be my Best Friend; I’ll find the best in you and I’ll offer you the best of me. We don’t need to align on everything and you don’t need to be my end all to all end alls.  Maybe you are my writing buddy or the one who holds my whispered marriage stories or the one who will get me through the years of caring for elderly parents. Maybe I can be your shopping or lunching friend or I can sit in the hospital with you while your baby is getting diagnosed, or help you house-hunt. Don’t feel the need to meet all my needs, just bring your best self and know I’ll bring mine.

The Real Stuff. I’ve been told I’m a tad more comfortable sharing the tough stuff and getting vulnerable than the average gal and I try to keep that in mind and go slowly. It’s hard because the times I’ve chosen to dive in deep with someone new have mostly paid off and I see no reason to wait. I don’t need you to bare your soul, but I do need to be real myself. And I need to know you can handle it. You may not be a God person, but you gotta know I’ll share my faith journey with you. You may hold your parenting fears close like cards, but you’ll hear a lot of my worries about my kids.

We’ve gotta be on the same team. There are enough people in the world transacting, posing, one-upping, competing and manipulating. I’ve got no time for that in a friendship and I don’t think you do either. If something about me brings up an insecurity in you, or something in your past has taught you that women are meant to be jockeying with each other, we can either talk about it frankly or move on from each other.

I can do the group friendships, but I love the one-on-ones more. I really love parties. I’ve built my whole career around them, for goodness’ sake. And I love to throw my own birthday party as many years as I can. I fill the room and introduce my friends to each other. The connector in me comes to life in groups. Those long tables filled with laughing women make great memories, and they are the perfect place to include newcomers, but know that I’ll look for time to be alone with you too. Alone we can discover together what we can share and what we can be to each other. And groups can bring out a different dynamic sometimes… one that doesn’t foster the kind of friendships I want. A few times I’ve learned I could be an individual friend with a particular woman, but I needed to avoid her in groups.

Laughter. You don’t need to be my personal comedian, but we’ve got to find a way to laugh together. Laughter heals me and hits the reset button. I can get through almost any stressful thing if I can find someone to laugh along the way with me.

Grace given easily. I’ll freely give it and I’ll need it too. I can’t have grudges in a friendship and I need to know no one is keeping score. I’m certainly not. If I’ve hosted you for dinner more than you’ve hosted me, know I am not tracking it and I’m likely finding that you are giving to me in some other way. Remember that part of my giving you my best? It doesn’t always appear as Even Stevens. There’s no tally pad in my heart. And I’ll likely come up short if there is one in yours.

Listening, especially to the hard things. I like to hear the whole thing. The whole story. All your feelings and thoughts. I’ve worked hard to become a good listener and I am cued up, waiting for you. I went through a rough patch a long time ago and I just couldn’t seem to move past it. I needed to reiterate and revisit the hurt and each time I verbally went through it, I learned something new about myself. As time went on, that experience provided much-needed personal growth. But while it was happening, it was hard and miserable. A close friend offered to be my listener. “You never have to apologize for repeating yourself with me. I’ll listen to the story as many times as you need to tell it.” Ever since, I’ve tried to be to others what she was to me.

Recently, I was sitting in church next to a new-ish friend and she leaned over and whispered, “Hey, do you think sometime we could just, like, talk?” I looked up and saw some brimming tears. “Now,” I replied. I grabbed her hand and exited the pew immediately. You know what I felt? Honored. Hopeful. Ready. When a woman leans into me and makes a bid for a deeper friendship, I know I’m one step closer to a Lucy and Eleanor relationship.

We women have so much to offer each other in this little lifetime and no time to waste. We’ll be 90 and hugging goodbye over our wheelchairs soon enough. Can we get started today?

What do you look for in a friendship that will stand the test of time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.

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