The Rubber Band of Friendship

I often arrive at coffee dates early enough to fit in a quick cuppa before the meet-up, using the quiet time to do some thinking, to look at the view and scribble in my journal. My coffee gets cold. I sip it anyway. I think some more, write some more.

This time I’m here to meet someone I haven’t seen in months, but with whom I once shared a close friendship. Over time our interactions have tapered off, our interests diverging and the circles we move in changing. In the past this hadn’t much mattered; the friendship always seemed to be able to stretch and snap back into shape quite readily. But these days I wonder if, perhaps, this stretched friendship has worn too thin. Perhaps it’s run its course.

We still meet up a couple of times a year to exchange birthday gifts over coffee or lunch. We talk about family, shared acquaintances, holiday plans, work, the past. Conversations tend to be fairly superficial, no longer the deep-and-meaningfuls of before. It’s come to feel as though these catchups are more a reluctance to completely abandon a friendship-that-was than a desire to build on it.

So why do it?

Perhaps it provides each of us with an opportunity to remember who we were, a pathway – however small and seldom travelled – back to the people we were when we met over 40 years ago. Perhaps we’re the keepers of each other’s stories, and the peripheral contact with each other’s lives we get at these meetings lets us continue to refer to each other as ‘friend’ and to feel that we’re, in some way, still part of a shared social context.

Staring at nothing in particular, I ponder on this. Is that social context still something I want – or need? Does it matter? Surely friendships, old or new, shouldn’t be so easy to shrug off, to dismiss as something that once-was? Or has she become no more than someone I used to know?

I have no answers, but perhaps its time to make friends with myself? It seems to me that, as I try to settle into being comfortable with who I am, I should take the time to draw breath, be in the moment, and take some advice from Dr Seuss: “Today you are you, that is truer than true; there is no-one alive who is you-er than you.“

And I AM; I’m the me-est me that there is and no-one can possibly be me-er than me – and I’m okay with that, with me. This friendship may turn out to have lost its capacity to bounce, to accept and accommodate, and that might be sad, but perhaps not unduly so. Perhaps it’s all just part of a continuum.

I finish my coffee, look around, and she’s arrived. And it’s like a dust devil just whirled through my thoughts, leaving them scattered. She’s beaming, her arms are open, her body language welcoming and exuding delight. She’s delighted to see me! Delighted that we’ve finally made time to catch up. Delighted to be here – with me.

And that rubber band – the one that felt so stretched only moments before – snaps back into place. Just. Like. That.