Making New Friends

On the drive to school yesterday my daughter asked me if I had made any new friends yet. This isn’t the first time she has asked me about this. Making friends is a big deal in her five year old world, and she assures me that she has made many new friends since moving here. Friends at school. At dance. With the children of people Rob and I know. And she considers herself a great friend of our next door neighbor, Charlotte. Katy can spend hours following Charlotte around as she does yard work and other outdoor chores. Of course this got me thinking, once again, about me and the friends thing. I just have never been one to make friends easily. Even when I can manage to be outgoing, I am an acquired taste it seems. Since coming here to live, I haven’t given the whole friends thing much thought. I have been more focused on activities I like and finding groups and venues that allow me to pursue them. I wonder sometimes if this will eventually lead me to friendships, but I don’t dwell on it. Still, it worries my daughter or she wouldn’t bring it up.

The majority of friends I have made since leaving college for the adult world have been made in the workplace. The trouble with job friends is that they are relative to that job. When you leave for another workplace, you leave behind those friendships. A few have survived. Meg and I met twenty years ago now and we are still good friends. Her girls are like nieces to me and if I were to have an older sister, it would be Meg. I met Sandi at Goodrell in the mid-nineties but it wasn’t until we worked together on the 8th grade team that we became friends. We keep in touch by email now, and she read this blog (Hi Sandi!), but with as a full time teacher with a husband and three little ones she is a very busy woman. Judi taught next door to me at my last teaching assignment. She is still there and we too communicate now through email. And then of course there are those I met via the Internet. My mommy friends who I post with still after nearly seven years and though I have seen pictures of them and their families, I haven’t met a single one in person yet. There is Liz on the soap board too. I don’t watch the soap anymore but I continue to keep up with her. I don’t even know what she looks like. I have met a few people through the Widows’ board. Rob, of course. But also Cheryl, who came to our wedding and we keep in touch with on Facebook. Marsha in Illinois whose blog I read. Fi and Sarah here in Canada. Fi found me through my blog and we are friends on Facebook too. Sally too is a widow friend and fellow blogger who I hope to catch up with in person one day.

Is it odd to have so many friends that I don’t interact with in the flesh? It would seem odd to my daughter. I guess it would seem odd to many others too. Without a job I am left to meet potential friends as I may. The gym is not proving to be a fertile ground for friendship, nor is the swim class I attend twice a week. I go to workout. Like reading or writing, I get in a zone and disappear. The writing groups I have joined are still possibilities. I met some really great women in the group I belonged to back in Des Moines, but I haven’t been attending the groups here long enough to know for sure yet.

I should worry more about this, I know. One of the worst side-effects losing my first husband was that I lost many of the social contacts and friends I made while we were married. Aside from my best friend, Vicki, everyone else fell by the wayside. Not that I dwell on this much, but if something were to happen to Rob, there would really be no one here for me. Most everyone I know, I know through him and if you have ever been widowed (and I imagine the same holds true for divorce) you know that your spouse’s friends are really and truly just that. His friends. At the moment though, I am usually so busy that I don’t really notice, and I guess it helps too that I have always been able to be alone. That’s not true of everyone.

I am not going to worry about it. Friends come along, like love, when you are just living your life and making the most of every minute.