The gift of friendship

Come as you are: Friendship after kids
by Clare La Plante

On Thursday afternoons, I would enter the church, a whitewashed brick building, from the side entrance. The pastor had turned the entire basement into a playroom with colorful mats and balls and playpens, bins and bins of toys, and a fully stocked kitchen with high chairs and changing station. This is great, I thought, as I took in the sea of moms scattered about, kneeling and sitting on the floor, each following or holding a young child.

I was late coming into the mom’s group thing — my son was already about a year and a half old — but then I was late to the mother thing. I had my first child at 43. And now I was desperate to meet other mothers after a long winter of living in cold and lonely lockdown.

My old friends were still around — they were just . . . well, you know, busy — as I had been just several years before. Now, life had slowed to a crawl, and the silence was deafening, even amid the cries and wails of my little boy.

And so into this room I went, where 15 or so women seemed to be always talking to each other, sharing stories of their recent activities, and making plans for their moms’ nights out: comedy clubs, chocolate-fondue bars, and in-home bookclubs. And all I wanted to do was to look into another mother’s eyes and say, “How do you do it?”

Then I realized that I was 20 years older than they were. I didn’t have the courage to tell the other mothers the truth: that I was really tired, that I envied their youth, their children’s young grandparents, and the whole resiliency of that room. That I needed a friend.

That I wanted someone to ask me, “How do you do it?” so I could say in reply, “I’m not sure that I do.”

 tried to fake it as I ate strawberries and drank iced tea and the children ran into each other, but I found reasons not to go back.
After a time, I realized that I had to grow up, to try to face what Garrison Keillor calls the “terrible question”: “If people knew the truth about us — if they saw where we live when it’s not cleaned up — would they still like us?” And I thought: ‘Aha — another gift of motherhood — to face that ‘terrible’ question.”

Keillor says he’s never resolved that question, and much of my life has been avoiding that same question. Now, I realized, I couldn’t avoid it much longer.

That mother’s group in the church basement had helped me face a truth: Friendship happens best when we come as we are. So now, when people visit and my house looks like a freeze frame of my life over the past two weeks — the clothes worn, meals eaten, bills not paid — well, so be it.

Or sometimes, after a sleepless night, when dark thoughts congregate like dew on a bud, I no longer effectively pretend otherwise. Like the night I spent crying in the bathtub because the temperature was 100 degrees in Chicago, we didn’t have air-conditioning, and I was one night-time feeding away from a meltdown.

An old friend called later that day. I whispered to her, like a confession: “I was terrible this morning.” And she said, “It’s part of being a mother.” We laughed, and grace shimmered, just a bit, in the summer heat.

These moments are helping me to see how immensely fallible I am and we all are, and how much we need to be restored through God's inestimable grace, which we often find through our friends — pieces of mosaic that make a good-enough picture of my life.

My vows to my son at his baptism, written by my friend, a minister, somehow capture my own wish for myself as a mom. They are taped to my refrigerator. I speak a little prayer every time I face the disorganized, over-ripe, and confusing mess inside.

My next-door neighbor passes along trucks and sneakers to my son and sits with me in the summer afternoons. I have little in common with her, aside from our two boys, and I think that just may be enough.
The woman down the block shares my child-rearing views, and I just couldn’t hold her at arm’s length, even though that’s what I like to do. We learned to trust each other at warp speed — she had a difficult second pregnancy to go through. My mother was sick.

Then there’s my old friend Lucia, whose own son I met when he was a day old, 18 years ago. One early spring day in Chicago — the day before my son’s second birthday — Lucia met us at a nature center on Chicago’s north side.

In her hand she had a backpack filled with beach toys. “I remember another little boy who likes backpacks,” she said as she handed the pack to my son. He put it on his back and refused to take it off, even though it nearly pulled him backwards. “By myself,” he said, as he tacked away through the wind. And I thought, as Lucia and I followed close behind, “Well, not really.”

As we walked around the nature center’s lagoon, the small boy and backpack veering like a sailboat, my friend took out her camera and said to my son, “Here is a picture of you on the last day you are one,” And I thought, she is giving me what I cannot always give myself: permission to be the mother I’d like to be, the freedom to love and give without fear of reprisal.

Clare La Plante is the author of Heaven Help Us: The Worrier's Guide to the Patron Saints (Dell 1999), Dear Saint Anne, Send Me a Man, and Other Time-tested Prayers for Love (Universe Publishing, 2002), and Chicago's 50 Best Places to Take Children (Universe Publishing, 2004). She lives with her husband and son in a Chicago suburb.

Friendship break-ups 101
by Amber Leberman

Maybe you’ve had the same best friend your entire life. Maybe you met in elementary school and have been friends ever since. Maybe, despite all the changes you’ve both endured — different careers, marriage, children — you’re still as close as you ever were.

Or maybe you’re like me and have had a different best friend for every stage of life. In elementary school it was Jennifer. We were close, despite the fact that we tormented each other the way grade school girls sometimes do. In junior high it was Heather, who was a great companion through those early adolescent years of budding talent, first crushes, and family tragedies. In high school, it was Julia, with whom I shared an interest in combat boots, The Smiths and self-indulgent poetry.

In college my best friends were David, Kathy, and Kathryn. We all lived in the same dormitory and were out-of-staters at a university where many students went home on the weekends. We quickly bonded when we found ourselves left on campus. Soon we were doing community service projects together, piling into Kathy’s pickup truck for trips to the discount store, and going out for Sunday dinner. Kathryn and I would discuss Christianity and sports. David and Kathy became each others’ default dates for fraternity and sorority parties. We went to each others’ homes, in Arkansas, California and New York, for vacations.

Of those college friends, I’ve remained close with David and Kathy. Despite living thousands of miles apart, we still share the most important moments in each others’ lives. Last year, I attended David’s 30th birthday cruise and Kathy’s wedding. We make it a point to vacation together once a year.

But I’ve fallen away from my friendship with Kathryn. The telephone calls got gradually shorter and less frequent. The promises to visit went unfulfilled. There was no real reason for the split — no good reason, at least. We didn’t have a fight or a disagreement. It just stopped being a friendship.

Through David, who still stays in touch with Kathryn, I hear that she’s sad we’re no longer in touch. I’m sad, too. I have great memories of studying together, acting silly at the Statue of Liberty, entertaining ourselves while stuck in airports, making fun of our professors’ idiosyncrasies.

We became friends and fell out of friendship before the age of the blog, MySpace or Facebook. Another friend has recently forayed into the world of Facebook. He recently blogged about the “broken heart” icon Facebook users can choose to display heartbreak.

I assume that most people use that icon to represent trouble within, or the end of, a romantic relationship. I wonder what these people do when their friendships end. Do they announce it on social networking sites with a sad icon? Or do they stay silent about it, like me, ashamed and sad that it didn’t work out?

Whether you proclaim your newly broken friendship to the world or keep it to yourself, here are some tips:

Let yourself grieve. You might feel like you’ve lost that one person who really understood you. You might have to find someone else to go to that concert you have two tickets for. It’s okay to be sad about that. Most likely the sadness is temporary, but if the feeling won’t go away, don’t hesitate to talk to your pastor or a therapist about the situation.

Cultivate new friendships. If your entire social life revolved around the friend you just broke up with, it’s time to re-evaluate. Get involved with a club or a church group.

Keep it real. If you’re part of an online social network or keep a blog, use it to share what has happened. But even if you’re angry, don’t lash out at the person you’ve just broken up with. Spiteful Internet postings can do lasting damage. Your other friends (and even future employers) may form opinions about you based on how you handle this situation. Tell the truth, but be fair to the other person and her perspective.

Get out. Don’t stay home, wallowing in despair. Rather, use your newfound free time to explore new things. This breakup may be the perfect opportunity to try something you’re putting off. Doing something new will help you heal faster and give you a creative outlet. A new hobby or sport can give you something to look forward to. Maybe it’s time to take salsa-dancing lessons, go to the pottery studio, or enroll in that rock-climbing clinic at the gym.

Be kind to yourself. Just because it didn’t work out doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you or that you’ll never again form a close friendship.

Spend some time with yourself. We can learn a lot about ourselves from friendships that didn’t work out. Take some time to think about the person you’ve been recently. Did you act in accordance with the values of your faith? Would you have changed the way you acted before the breakup? During? After? Did you lie to her? Did you embellish the truth about the situation to others? What would you have done differently? What do you wish she had done differently?

Don’t expect the impossible. If you’re part of a circle of friends, don’t expect them to act differently toward the friend you just broke up with. Don’t expect them to take your side. The social dynamic in your group will change. Roll with it.

Amber is Web manager for www.thelutheran.org, the online companion of The Lutheran magazine, and is art director for The Little Lutheran, a durable new magazine for children 6 and younger.

Unexpected friendships
by Rebecca Kasten

When I was 28, I had just moved to a new town when I met Eleanor, a retired widow in her late 70s, at a faith circle in my new church. We immediately became friends.

We are kindred spirits, and when we talk it seems like the 46-year difference in our ages evaporates.

Eleanor is funny, frank, optimistic, and practical. She likes to talk as much as I do and she can tell a good story. I have also found that she helps me put things in perspective — she has years and experience that I, my friends, and even my parents don't have. She has become my extended family.

My friends who have moved away from home seem to miss what extended family often gives — the time, help, caring, and perspective of people who aren't necessarily in your age or peer group. We hear their stories, get their council, and see them in action. We can learn a lot from them. Those of us who don't live close to our families often crave that sense of family.

Sometimes we miss it more than we know.

The book of Ruth is a story of surrogate family. I recently re-read the book in my study Bible, and the commentary says that a major theme of the book is chesed — a Hebrew word that means "loyalty or faithfulness arising from commitment." It goes on to say that chesed can describe the relationship between God and a human community or between members of a family or members of a community.

The story opens with an account of Naomi, who was from Bethlehem and moved with her husband and two sons to Moab, to avoid a famine. Her husband later died. This was hard for Naomi because a woman's status in that culture depended on her father, husband, sons, or a male relative. Fortunately, she had two sons to provide for her.

Naomi's sons found wives and settled into the local community and remained there for 10 years. Tragically, her sons died. Naomi loved her widowed daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah. She worried about their safety. She told them to return to their people. 

Orpah kissed Naomi good-bye and went back to her people but Ruth said, "Where you go, I go; where you stay, I stay; your people are my people; and your God, my God." (Ruth 1:16)

Ruth traveled with Naomi back to Bethlehem, to a place and a future unknown. When they arrived, Ruth offered to go to the fields to work. Her labor would provide them with much-needed food. Her first day in the fields, Ruth was noticed and taken care of by the owner of the fields, Boaz. When Ruth told Naomi about this, Naomi, who knew that the field owner was a kinsman of her late husband, understood the kindness and generosity of Boaz. Naomi hoped that she might be able to secure Ruth's future by helping her marry Boaz.

When I think of this loyalty and commitment and the reciprocity of those friendships, I think of my relationship with Eleanor. In the beginning, I was needing and she was giving.

Shortly after we first became acquainted, Eleanor offered to babysit for me. Since then she has babysat often over the years, which is no small feat given that my family has grown from two children when she first offered to four children ages 4-10. Ours is a one-income family, and when Eleanor babysits it means that my husband and I can afford to go out and have some time together. Not only that, but while we are gone the kids are busy hearing about life growing up as part of a big family on a farm in rural Illinois in the 1920s and 30s and what it was like to date and eventually marry a soldier who was a POW in World War II. They have the full attention of a woman who was a first-grade teacher for 30 years and genuinely loves being with them.

I have asked Eleanor if I could repay her and she has always said "No." She told me that years ago, when her children were small, she had neighbors, Virginia and Clarence, who helped her out. "You know Virginia would just come and help me out of more trials and tribulations and there really wasn't much I could do for her. And she'd say, 'Oh, pass it on!' And well, that's what it is — 'Pass it on!'. I guess in all honesty I feel like Virginia. I have the time and I am passing along something that meant a lot to me when I was younger."

Eleanor cannot possibly know how much her friendship has meant to me, not only for the babysitting but because she has become an extra grandparent to my kids and is family to my husband and me. I listen to her experiences, her views, and her advice, and I have found her perspective invaluable. She was married for 38 years and sometimes she helps me, even without meaning to, to see the forest for the trees. She helps me have a sense of humor about being a wife and a mom. What a gift.

Sometimes these friendships fall in your lap, but most need cultivation.

We need to be open, especially to the unexpected. Because of my friendship with Eleanor, I often think about my relationships with older people. But it hadn't occurred to me until fairly recently that I may be that older person! There's a young woman at church who is a junior in high school — that makes me about 20 years older than she is — who seeks me out. She is funny and smart, and she has an interesting outlook on life. I’ve realized that I need to be intentional in cultivating her friendship.

It seems the time is ripe for us — women of many ages — to find each other, to get to know each other, and to reach out to each other. I have a feeling that we, like Naomi and Ruth, have much to offer each other and will find that God will provide for us through those relationships.

Rebecca Kasten lives in Champaign, Illinois with husband, four children and dog. She works at home, volunteers in two elementary schools, and works part-time in a third. By night she chauffeurs children around, helps with homework, and does massive amounts of laundry. When she finds spare time she likes to write, run and bike long distance, and go camping. She is the Triennial Gathering promoter for her Women of the ELCA synodical women's organization.