One is Silver…

Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver and the other gold.

This old song which we used to sing at Girl Scout meetings still rings true.  While making new friends, don’t forget about the old ones.  Who is your most recent friend?  You know, the friend that you’ve known the least amount of time?  I made a new friend yesterday… and it felt wonderful.

As we get older, friends are much harder to come by.  When we’re in school it is so incredibly easy to make friends.  We talk to people in our classrooms, in our extra curricular activities, at our school dances, in our dormitories.  We are surrounded by friends.

As we get older it becomes more difficult.  We spend our days changing diapers and rocking babies and we really don’t get out much.  The friends we make are usually the parents of our children’s friends.  These are friends who have things in common with us… we share breastfeeding issues, weight loss tips, go strollering around the mall, we sit and chat while the kids are swinging at the park.  The kids get older and make different friends and we tend to move on as well.  We move on to the next set of parents.

Every once in a while we find a friend who turns out to be a lifelong friend, but it’s rare.  Once the kids get to the point where they don’t have playdates, they have “get togethers”, your chances of meeting new friends kind of goes out the window.

So yesterday, my 5 year old had a playdate with a new friend.  I always hesitate on playdates when they are at the other kids’ house because there is always that strange few moments at drop-off where I wonder, do I stay? or do I go?  Should I just drop off my kid and leave for 2 hours?  If I stay, am I bothering the mother by hanging out, and what if we have nothing to talk about?

I decided I would just come right out and ask.  “Would you like me to just drop off or would you feel more comfortable if I stayed?”  She said, “Well, I thought you would just stay.”  Okay… I did.

I had a great time.

We talked about stuff… not just the kids.  We talked about our families and our husbands.  We talked about different cultures and our job goals.  We complained about our houses and cooking dinner.  We laughed… a lot.  This is a woman I liked right away.  This is the kind of woman I could be real friends with.

Then… as I was making a new friend, I got an email from an old friend.  My best friend from college who I hadn’t heard from in a long time.  She lives on the east coast, I live on the west and while we hardly ever see each other, we still manage to shoot each other a phone call or email every now and then and wouldn’t you know it… we pick up right where we left off.

Nothing can lift your mood like hearing from an old friend… or making a new one.