You Got to Have Friends
So where are they??
I don’t know if you were around when Bette Midler’s song, Friends, came out in 1973, but I was. I was in high school and she, along with Carole King, Dionne Warwick (with a little help from her friend, Stevie Wonder), Bill Withers, and Queen, sang to me about friendship (please click on the links and enjoy).
At the time I was living in the dorm of an all-girls boarding school in San Antonio, Texas. It was a small school with girls from all over Texas (primarily) and a few from Mexico. As boarders, we were together 24/7. We went to school together, played sports together, and lived together.
Sometimes we got in trouble together. Nothing catastrophic….usually smoking cigarettes in the dorm or coming in late. Usually.
Many of those friendships have remained in my life, or renewed after many years via Facebook (thanks, Facebook!).
I grew up in Fort Worth, TX, and ran around in the same circles for many years with people I knew from kindergarten on up. I met my oldest friend in that kindergarten class. We’ve known each other now for over sixty years and have had some crazy adventures together.
She is also the one to remind me on an annual basis that, no matter how old she gets, I’ll always be older (by 11 days).
I lived in Texas (the Fort Worth area) for most of my 66 years. We’ve moved a bit the past few: first to Colorado for a couple of years, back to Texas for almost three years because our grandson wouldn’t stop growing, and now back in Colorado for the past two. I love living in Colorado, and I wish my dear friends and family members would move up here too. I miss them very much (but not enough to live in Texas again).
Now I’m at the age where I‘m losing some, especially one dear friend whom I miss terribly, usually to some kind of illness. I was grateful to spend time with her a few months before she passed (of course, I forgot to get a picture, as usual). I thought only “old” people had peers who passed. I remember a dear woman from my youth who lived for over 100 years. She mentioned once how difficult it was when all your friends were gone…being the only one left. She felt she had lived too long.
It is HARD to make new friends as an older adult.
When you have children, often your group of friends comes through your children’s friends, either at school or through sports. You may have holdovers from high school if you live where you were raised, or from your college/fraternity/sorority era. Unlike my high school friends, I was never close to most of my college friends or sorority sisters.
Some people find their friends in church or at work. I don’t currently participate in either so the pool of people for me to choose from isn’t very big. I’m not a member of a club of any kind. I don’t drink so I’m not going to go to wine tastings or join a drinking group.
It gets lonely. I love my husband but sometimes I need more estrogen in my life. I would truly love a local friend for lunch dates, or art fairs, or shopping, or getting nails done, or coffee, or walking, or….just about anything.
I have joined a couple of MeetUp groups that target older women. One in particular has many outings that involve alcohol, like happy hours. It’s not that I can’t be around alcohol, but I prefer not to. I’m not interested in having a deep conversation with someone next to me in a small space and smelling their alcohol breath. Ewww.
I have found some card and domino players in one of the MeetUp groups. We usually get together once a month to play one or the other. I’ve also joined a couple of Facebook groups geared toward older women. One is a hiking group, but I am currently rehabbing a hip injury and haven’t been cleared by my physical therapist for anything more than about a mile. I’m a slow hiker anyway, and I don’t want to hold anyone back. I tend to hike alone.
One of the Facebook groups I belong to is for older women (60+) looking for support. Of the challenges they list, finding friends…feeling seen or valuable again….is near the top.
At least I’m not alone in that. Ah…. the irony.
I’ve done some volunteering but the jobs I have done have been solo ones. Maybe I should take up pickleball. Or a writing group. Or a different volunteer opportunity.
I want it to be easy. I just want to walk up to a house, knock on the door, and ask, “Can Katy come out and play?”
*sigh*
What do you do to make friends as an older adult? Where do you go? Are there some hobbies that work better than others? Take a class? Join a club? What??
Its fun to play at the YMCA. I have lots of mermaid friends there and it has spun off into other activities.