Marilyn Englander: Seasons of Friendships

There is a season for everything, and Marilyn Englander says that includes friendships.

My nine-year-old came home one day in tears . “Lily won’t sit with me at lunch! She doesn’t like me anymore!” She was bereft: the first real loss of a friend. I struggled to console her.

What I mustered was a vague theory, Seasons of Friendship. My daughter’s pain awoke  memories from my own life, when a friend simply drifted away or stopped calling. I’d feel hurt, or angry, but sometimes was too busy even to notice… until months had piled up and I was too embarrassed to reach across the lonely divide that had opened up.

Our friendships – sometimes thriving, other times withering, out of sync. These sustaining alliances are many times inscrutable. When am I drawn near, when left to drift away?

When I was a new mother, my older friend Sally came over. She cooed at the baby, then looked up to say, “Well, I guess I’ll see you again in about 30 years.” I protested, not knowing that my new life would overtake me and I’d have little left to tend our friendship. Sally took it in stride. She accepted the seasons of friendship. After my kids grew up, she and I again began to spend hours together, laughing over coffee. She didn’t resent the long fallow years. I learned a valuable lesson.

A sadder story I feared would never resolve. An older couple mentored me in my first teaching job. Worldly wise and experienced, they dazzled me. I was honored they wanted me as a friend. But the years went by, they moved away and struggled with marital problems. Our friendship was a casualty of that. Angry, hurt, I bitterly let them go. Decades later they reappeared, arms outstretched. I was wary at first, but their return was a balm. We’d stumbled. There are no friends quite like old friends.

“To everything there is a season.” Blossoming or fading, human attachment may be no different.

With a Perspective, this is Marilyn Englander.

Marilyn Englander is a North Bay educator.