The worst thing is...

I am always contemplating. As a busy working mom with two kids, a lot of my downtime consists of contemplation. But one thing keeps popping up over and over. One that resonates with so many of us and is unfortunately a source of some pain for me. That it is truly hard for friendships to survive. I have always had a lot of great friends and since I have lived in multiple locations, I have ended up with many across the country, and even the world.

But as time moves on that large group gets thinned out. Whether it be due to having dissimilar lifestyles- you have kids, they don't. You're married, they aren't. You're on one coast and have no money or time to visit. We're all so busy these days that maintaining some of even your greatest friendships becomes a bullet on your 'To Do' list that often slides down past things like:

• Get the kids their flu shots
• Refinance the house
• Work projects
  
• Have an actual date night with your spouse

This is a sad fact of life and I need to work harder to make sure this doesn't become a reality. Yes, of course you lose friends in a course of a lifetime. Some are just meant be be supporting roles in your life's Act I. Others who may have started out as supporting players become best friends in Act II. You cannot predict what brings people together and what can ultimately lead them apart. Most of my mother's bridesmaids from her first marriage to my father, when she was 20, she hasn't spoken to in nearly 30 years. But the ones from her second marriage to my step-dad, are like her sisters. Is this due to the maturity she had when she formed these friendships? The common threads they shared having young children?

The reason that I take this more personally is due to some experiences I had when I was young. In elementary school I had lots of friends and was 'popular' as you could only describe it in 5th grade terms. I was not the lost girl in the Judy Blume books yet, as I would find myself identifying with much more in middle school. When I arrived into the three years of 'hell' as I fondly refer to them, I was caught off guard with the ease of making new friends and the matching quickness to which they become enemies. I had two best girl friends for a period of time, through 7th grade. We shared the three-way split heart best friend necklace. We loved boys, and Puffalumps, and scrunchies. But at some point, I was whacked with a best friend 'break-up.' These two girls who I spent all my time with outside of my family, dumped me via passed note in a Geography class in 7th grade. To make matters worse, the teacher absconded the note and read it aloud for all of the class to hear. I suffered paralyzing stomach aches, skipped school to stay at home, and was miserable until I picked myself up and dusted myself off and made my way into a new group of friends, many of whom I still know today.

But that experience and others scarred me in a way that comes back to me time and time again. It made me so desperate to hang onto friendships, that I cultivated many. But sometimes quantity over quality isn't the best move. Because now that I am a mom, an adult, and am so head over heels busy in life, it makes it that much harder to keep cultivating these friendships. Yet many of us can go weeks, months, and even years without talking and when we finally do it is like coming home again. Even so, that nagging feeling of missing them in those off times is something that like the ebb and flow of the tides, becomes just part of your every day.

I wish we could all live down the street from one another, have BBQs and game nights, and have all of our spouses become best friends like we wished for when we were younger. But that is a dream reserved for sets of twins who marry another set of twins, and quite frankly, I am not sure I want THAT much closeness anyway. In this day and age of social media I see that we have ended up with "BBQs" down the street from more than 300 of our friends and acquaintances. I personally have embraced the use of Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch with friends and family. I started this blog over three years ago for that exact reason. And for those good friends of mine who use these outlets, we stay oddly in touch with each other even if we don't speak for months. I worry that in these days of social media, and texting over talking, what we think of as conventional friendships will be a thing of the past. Bloggers become friends without ever meeting. This can be risky, even dangerous in some respects but this can be such a good thing for people as well. People become pals using supportive forums from everything from trying to conceive to a shared disease.

Regardless of this new era, I know that I need to tend the gardens of these friendships a little better. Actual phone calls, an occasional present in the mail, a nice handwritten note. I need to leave the guilt, the Judy Blume issues of my past, the sadness and regret to other dysfunctional friendships and be happy with all the ones that I have, even if I get only brief moments with them.