Moving frequently growing up, childhood friendships were made and broken but not necessarily forgotten. I have vivid memories of a girl from first grade in Florence, Alabama who invited me over to spend the night and we stayed up late jumping madly on couch cushions like they were trampolines. There was gentle red-headed Pam Bowers, who I only remember saying good-bye to just before we moved, and my first crush as a seven year old. There was this adorable boy who lived in our Richmond, Virginia neighborhood with a brown crewcut and a serious overbite. He sealed our troth with a thin metal ring with a sky blue stone just before we moved. As a child and even as a young teenager, I didn’t understand how you maintained friendships because we would inevitably move and these connections were severed.
It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I learned that you can have friendships that are grounded in the ordinary and everyday. (But mind you, we can’t experience the ordinary and everyday unless we live somewhere for a reasonable period of time.) Today, this might mean having coffee at a local cafe, celebrating a birthday or christening, taking a walk together or attending a book launch or art exhibition. It also might mean taking a friend a pot of vegetable soup when they are ill or getting a recommendation for a good dentist. Moving frequently, I had assumed that I had to earn any potential friend’s interest by being, well, interesting. Otherwise, why would anyone notice me or care to get to know me?
Fortunately, I have since learned to relax and to recognize that our best and most enduring friendships have many different variations but share some important qualities: mutual respect, an abiding curiosity about the other person and some undefinable spark. I have also learned that certain friendships will continue mainly because of history—these friendships rely on habit not intimacy. But there can be a comfort in having a shared history with another person, a history that doesn’t change, and in my case, doesn’t move away.
With all these variations in friendship, there are some rare friends in your life who continue to surprise and inspire you. I can’t be sure of the percentage for other people but with my itinerant background, I can number about two people who fall into this special category. They are friends for a lifetime and we connect on some deeper level no matter where I am living and no matter what I am doing. It doesn’t mean that they can’t annoy or frustrate you but distance is never a barrier. For those of us who have been ‘Professional Newcomers’, this is a gift that can never be taken for granted.
