The second positive of turning 50 is that you have amassed fifty years of friends. They span a bizarre spectrum that is a direct reflection of your own personal growth. The friends I had when I was little are nothing like the friends I have now. In grade one, my closest friend was as painfully shy as was I. We hung out on the swings at recess and sat together in class. We were both too shy to dare ask to visit after school or hang out on the weekend.
Fast forward to grade seven. My best friends were cheeky and daring. We were the bright lights of our grade with lots of promise and endless future. We did everything together: lunch, recess, hanging out at the park, swimming at the rec centre. We were invincible. The boy who admired me was blonde and blue eyed and terribly shy. All he did was stare at me when he thought I wasn't looking. Considering we did independent study amongst a very small set of close knit kids, I am sure I always saw him. My friends and I made calls to his house we could never follow through so we hung up and giggled like crazy. I am certain he returned the favour.
Then there was grade eight. Our little band miraculously grew apart over the summer. Different interests, different maturity levels, different class registrations. By the time of the first school fall dance, I had a new set of friends including the sister of my summer crush. We got drunk before the dance and it was a miracle we weren't all expelled. I was crushing on a boy in grade nine and my old friends thought it was scandalous. These were interesting times (maybe more in a later blog). My new friends and I were all exploring our new role as teenagers and we pushed the whole box of envelopes. We would grow over the next three years in ways that were sometimes frightening.
Ah, then came grade ten. By then, I was a teenager. Any shyness had fled. I was bold and determined. Life had been dealing out lessons and I was learning how to cope on my own. My boyfriend was a redhead with blue eyes. So had been the boyfriend before him but he had died tragically before we got past the stage of burning off each other's eyebrows with bic flames. This second red head was not a good match and we fought ferociously. We finally decided to end it amicably. It was the only amicable part of the relationship. My friends, though, were joined at my hip. Strangely enough, they were made up in part of those girls I had been so close with in elementary school and in part with people I met in grade eight. We all blended and became the best of friends. We were young and in charge once again. Oh the places we went! And the dreams we had! If only I could tell all. Perhaps those years will be captured in an auto-biography to be released on my death. Let that be fifty more years from now!
Anyway, friendships continued to fluctuate. That fateful summer I met the love of my life. I let him go ultimately. I have never stopped regretting it. You want to die without regret. It's not possible. This is mine. But it was a lovely couple of years while it lasted. He has married since and I gather he has a bundle of daughters. Considering how good he was with my sisters, I imagine his daughters are very fortunate girls.
My highschool friends remained the same to the end but already the tugs of change began to pull us in different directions. I was a woman on a mission. My singular goal was to graduate with grades that would get me into university and out of my home town. I needed to get out, to put a lot of things behind me.
By the end of my fourth year in university, I had lost touch with every one of my childhood friends but had made friends who remain fast to this day. Lovers came and went. Engagements were made and broken. Life went on. I met and left my second regret. We all must have them - we are not blessed with hindsight until it is behind us. But those few friends are just who they seemed to be and they were my constant. They too were women on a mission and determined to get where they were going. We had as much fun as we could afford, and as little food as we could live on, but we always had each other to support us and kick us along. To this day, their friendships remain my greatest blessings.
Law school was a return to highschool in many ways. Crushes. Breakups. New loves. Friends. Disappointments. Joys. And always that mission. I made friends in law school but when I left, the ones I carried forward were the ones I became close with once we were done. It's odd when I think back on it, as if we knew the friends we had for those three years were only for that time. In the end, it was the only place I have ever been where I did not make friends I could call kindred spirits.
I have had a very fulfilling career. I have made some very close friends. One is a woman who was my sister's best friend growing up. They too grew in different directions. The friend grew in my direction. She is one of my closest friends. I am grateful to them all for their part in making my life complete and for being there for me. I continue to make friends in smaller bundles but just as fulfilling to where I am. I know that some will move on. Others I know will still be there when I am in my rocking chair and reminiscing - not unlike I am now.
I am grateful to them all and have had fifty years of fond memories. What more could one ask for?
No comments:
Post a Comment