Commentary:
My friend and I share a babysitter. The babysitter is also a grandmother, a hip one who once invited us to a brunch with all her very classy and older friends. They all had curated outfits with colorful and gaudy jewelry that on a younger person you think they'd have found it thrifting, and on an older person, you speculate that they bought it Santa Fe, New Mexico, for hundreds of dollars.
My friend and I sat at the table, mostly listening while eating our fruit and gulping the mimosas, when one of her friends mused about our youth and our friendship. "You have to hold on to those girlfriends," she said. "Husbands die."
On a recent walk together, my friend recalled the brunch. I told her that she had to hang in there, for me at any rate. While I'm exceedingly glad for my husband, and he can fulfill many roles in my life (like being the first person who I want to gossip with after social interactions), I don't believe a marriage fills all the social needs for either person.
But friendships, as you age, are mystifying in their role in our individualistic society. A fantastic article by Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic pulled apart what happens to our friendships as we age and we hit snags with our expectations, our limitations and even our envy of one another.
It's a thought I had been stewing on as well after running across the idea that to maintain our friendships, we need to manufacture events, usually ones arranged well in advance. It promotes an artificiality, and sometimes sterility, that rubs against the authenticity and vulnerability that would be the balm for our souls. But we get busy. One step above not taking care of ourselves is neglecting our friendships, especially when we have kids, even though that might be the time when we really need that village.
Senior quotes psychotherapist Esther Perel: "Interdependence has to conquer the lonely, individualistic nature of Americans." However, our general dismantling of the position and value of friendships in our regular lives has stripped away our investment in the health of our entire community, especially the unraveling of the weaker ties. Remember when your friend's cousin's meemaw's knitting buddy would sell you her old, reliable car cheap because, hell, at that point of the equation you're a friend of the family? It's a form of community that's harder to find outside your initial circle of friends.
What also resonated from Senior's piece was the line, "If our friends become our substitute families, they pay for the failures of our families of origin."
My modeled behavior for community building wasn't great. My parents didn't have friends. We moved often. I was an only child. My mom was a foreigner in one land; my dad was one in the other. No one ever came to my house. Inviting friends over wasn't even something I thought to do for years.
When I did end up making friends, they did become substitute family members, but I ran into the stumbling block inherent in American culture: a bit of flakiness. In man-on-the-street interviews of foreigners, Americans seem to be regarded as boisterously friendly, effusive in ways that other cultures don't display. (Certainly not how my German culture ever would.) Foreigners I've encountered always debate whether our friendliness can be trusted.
And as Americans, bless our hearts, we know that sometimes it can't be trusted, because our society's pursuit of happiness became a pursuit of busyness, which has made it hard to be a good friend.
We know that friends can improve our lives, but they require a different type of work. It's work that when done steadfastly produces an end value that isn't something to report on a spreadsheet, but that ends up more profitable to the need of our souls.
Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com.