Lean On Me

I used to think my mother was weird for treasuring her friends on such a deep level, these women she spent so much time with, particularly after I left for college. But it dawned on me recently that my friends, who are all women except for one, have become more and more important to me as I’ve gotten older. 

I have a good number of friends and they fulfill different roles in my life.  Obviously some are closer than others. Some I’ve known longer; the well is deeper. Some I’m becoming closer with all the time.

I thought I might list what my friends do and have done for me, and how much it means to me.

 

• Listen to me when I’m having a problem with my husband or my son.
• Recommend: books, boutiques, restaurants, travel destinations.
• Cook amazing meals for my family and me, usually for Jewish holidays.
• Tell me when they’ll be at the beach so that I can meet them there and have someone to talk to when my kid has left me for other kids and/or the ocean.
• Support my ridiculous purchases. (Which are never really as ridiculous as theirs, I think they’ll agree, but I still feel that way.)
• Let me sleep on their couch. (This is an allusion to visiting friends in Brooklyn, not fighting with husband. We’ve never done the sleep-on-the-sofa-mad thing, though I think we’ve both pretended to start to do it at least once. We love each other too much to sleep apart in anger. Neither of us I don’t think wants to ever send that message.)
• Share an apartment with me and teach me how to be an adult. (This could be my husband too!)
• Tell me to get off my butt and walk harder, to join a campaign, to admit when something is my fault.
• Listen with patience and answer my inane questions about iphones, ipods, and computers over and over again.
• Bring me smoothies when I’m constipated after surgery.
• Walk with me…which really keeps me in shape.
• Talk to the nurse when she calls on my cell phone to deliver the horrible news that my mother has died.
• Tell me their problems, ask for my advice, and let me help them.
• Send me some of the funniest emails.
• Call…just to check in.
• Let me horn in on their date nights when my husband is travelling.
• Read my blogs.

I didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid.  Maybe because I didn’t know how to be a friend, maybe because we moved around a lot. Who knows?  I think I’m a pretty good friend now, at least I try to be. 

I don’t know what I’d do without my friends.  I’m not sure they always know that, but it’s true.