Friendship And Related Tales

When my friend and writing buddy, Janet Givens, posed interesting questions on her blog last week about first best friends, I thought, Oh, my God! I don’t think I had one. There’s something terribly wrong with me. Everyone I know has tons of best friends from their early life.

Take my husband, Bill. He has loads of old friends who he keeps in touch with on a regular basis. His school and college reunions are always a special time for him. I love watching those guys come together again after many years of being apart. With some it’s as if there has never been a long separation.

I also feel a great deal of envy on those occasions. I wish there was someone from 4th grade I could have a reunion with. Or maybe even from high school.

I remember two special friends from grammar school but our relationship didn’t last very long. The first was Sandra, who lived down the road. We walked a mile to school together. We were in 3rd grade and made clothes for our dolls out of scraps of cloth from her mother’s scrap basket. I really liked her and her mom, too. But then my parents discovered she was Jewish. That was the end of that. I never understood their reasoning.

Then there was Nadine, the black girl, who was in my fourth grade class. I stopped by her house one day on my walk home. We were playing kickball in her front yard with a bunch of other kids, when my mother drove by looking for me because I was late arriving home. Orders came from on high (my father) that I couldn’t play with her anymore. She was the wrong color.

There always seemed to be something wrong with everyone I was friends with. I had to keep my contrary thoughts to myself or face long harangues about who was right for me to play with and who just wasn’t good enough.

On top of that, all throughout my childhood, my architect/home builder, dad, moved us from one unfinished spec home to another. I made friends with new classmates, but then a year or so later when the house was finished and sold, we’d move again. I always had to start over.

It wasn’t until jr. high and high school that we finally had a home of our own where we stayed until I graduated … except for the year my parents packed me off to boarding-school because they wanted to break up my romance with Steve. No he wasn’t black or a Jew. He was a boy.

Then after graduation off we moved to Vermont. I was only allowed to apply to school there because tuition was cheaper than going out of state. I got into three colleges but my dad picked the one closest to home.

Whether I was born an introvert or not, I know my upbringing had a lot to do with my being shy and often needing time just for myself. I never knew anyone long enough to relax and fully trust them. At times I had to keep my friendships secret … never inviting them home … afraid of what my father would do or say.

Bill on the other hand went to the same prep school all of his life, except for a few years when he lived in Paris with his family. Though his parents were also prejudiced in many ways, they weren’t as awful as my folks. When Bill became a boarder in the upper school, his classmates became his family. His parents were often traveling.

I missed my 50th college reunion this year because of health problems here at home, but I’m not sure I would have gone anyway. My freshman year roommate, Connie Fuesting, was there, and I missed seeing her again. But among those who attended, I really didn’t know any of them. After our freshman year, both Connie and I took a year off from school and went back to New York to work to give ourselves time to figure out what we really wanted to do with our lives.

We both returned a year later. Connie lived on campus and I became a day-student, commuting back and forth from Killington. Not living on campus, I missed the opportunities of daily college life, freedom from my family, and living with my friends.

I did, however, have a two day-student friends from Rutland, who commuted with me in my antique, olive-drab, VW bug. (That’s a whole other story.) At Killington, there were a few ski-bums I was friendly with and dated once or twice. But most of my after school time was taken up with studying and working for my father. Then I met Bill and we got married. I was no longer under my father’s roof and rules. Having friends of all colors, religions, and ethnic backgrounds became very important to me.

Over the years I did see Connie from time to time, but lost touch with everyone else. We had a lovely reunion just a year ago in Vermont, when I went up to spend time with family and friends who still live there. I have no doubt we’ll get together again before too long.

What makes this blog so momentous for me is that this past week, one of my college commuting buddies, Joanne Goodrich, found me on Facebook. She was my Maid of Honor when I was married. Checking through her list of Facebook friends, I found another woman we hung out with, Gail Savarese. I’m beside myself that these two have shown up in my life again. Even though we live miles and miles apart, perhaps one day we’ll have a reunion of our own.

Do you keep in touch with old friends? How often do you see them?