Friends

I wish I were a better friend.  I think having realized that I am not a great friend is probably a great step toward becoming a better friend.  I just hope it is not too late.

I know lots of great women and I think I would like to be better friends with them, but I am not entirely sure how they do it.  It seems that a lot of women I know spend a big old bunch of time chatting on the phone and that is a big problem for me.  I just don't like it.  I get distracted, I get to thinking that there's something else I should be doing, I start doing it, I am not paying attention to my friend on the phone and then I get lost in the conversation and say something dumb or irrelevant or trite.

I don't want to do that, but it is a hard habit to break!

Last week, I was walking at the mall -- yes, mall walking, not shopping -- with a friend I have known since I was three years old.  I have been good friends with her, for all intents and purposes for about the last 15 years.  I still forget her kids' birthdays and I never send anniversary cards.  We don't borrow each other's stuff or drop by each other's houses unexpectedly.  Real friends do that stuff, don't they?  Anyway, we're mall walking and she is telling me about how concerned she is about her older son's social morays and habits and problems and I'm listening and I'm thinking and I'm sharing similar stories about my son (which is how I try to help -- sharing similar experiences that I think make it clear that I understand although recently I've wondered if it really makes it seem as though I am turning the conversation around to being about me, which I really don't mean to do but I wonder if I come off that way).  And we're walking and walking and I'm listening and sharing and listening and pretty soon I have that niggling little thought at the back of my mind that if I walk by the same Bath and Body Works, Foot Locker and Sprint Store ONE MORE TIME I'm going to scream.

So I say, "Okay,  we have to stop.  I'm bored."

"Oh, I'm boring you," she says.  "I've talked too much.  I'm sorry."

I didn't mean that at all, of course.  I was referring only to the number of times I had read the same damn sale signs in the stupid windows we were passing.  I just said it wrong.  I don't think real friends do that.  Real friends probably keep traipsing past the Foot Locker and around the ATM and by the Electric Cigarette kiosk (why????) without noticing because they are so engrossed in their friend's tale of woe.  Or happiness or angst or whatever.

I can't.  It's not that it always comes back to me or that it should, it's just that I have forgotten how to put myself out to be a friend to others.

I don't send Christmas cards.  I often don't say, "No, YOUR hair is always perfect," when someone compliments my hair.  Sometimes I don't even listen when someone answers my casual "how are you."

I don't want to be a bad friend.  I want deep and meaningful adult relationships.  I want to want to work out and vacation and borrow and lend with women.

Is it too late?  At 49, can I begin to be better?  I hope so.

Yesterday, a church lady friend (using the term loosely, of course) called me.  We discussed the church business we needed to, and then she started asking me about stuff in my life.  I answered her questions and made a real effort to ask her stuff back.  And guess what?  It kinda worked.  She shared with me some stuff about her husband that is tough; about her kids that is common between us (although I forgot  that her son is older than her daughter -- this friend I have known for YEARS and our kids acolyte together -- the kind of thing that comes naturally to a good friend, I just completely biff on); some concerns about a situation at our church.  And it was good.  And I made an effort -- I know it shouldn't feel like an effort, except maybe at first it's okay if it does, kind of like starting any new habit -- and it was good.  We chatted on the phone for, like, half an hour.  Like lady friends do, right?

Okay, so I have a baseline.

And today, I am going to mall walk with a different friend.  And my best friend from high school -- to whom I hadn't spoken in almost two years until I ran into her at a restaurant the other night -- just texted me.  So the harvest is plentiful.  There are wonderful, interesting, helpful, funny, smart women out there who may just be looking for a wonderful, interesting, helpful, funny, smart friend.

Like me.

I just wish I had started earlier and didn't have to feel like the new kid on the Kindergarten playground. So, here's to putting on my big girl panties and making new (better) friends.  Even if I have known them for 45 years!