Front Porch: Friendships grow dearer with age

I more and more value time with my women friends.

I have been married for more than half a century to a lovely man I can’t imagine facing the day without. Even so, there is something I get from – and I hope give to – my women friends that is irreplaceable … and increasingly gaining importance in my life.

We are older women, so there are fewer of us as our ranks continue to diminish. Some of us were born before World War II, some are war babies and some baby boomers.

There’s nothing unique about women who share a commonality. When child rearing, we find and attach to other women doing the same. Or being involved in a special interest group, organization or faith community, political party, work setting or what have you.

Arms linked, we women tend to be the seamstresses that stitch together the fabric of much of society. While it might be frowned upon to state that in such gender-specific terms, I make no apologies. It’s my lived experience.

I’m finding of late that all my women friends are significant to me more so than before, when we thought we’d live forever and much of life was out in front of us, when we were preoccupied with the getting there.

Now that we’re pretty much there, wherever that particular there might be, the relationships take on new meaning. Before, it used to be that if I wanted to go to a museum, I’d see which of my friends would like to go, too. Now, I think that I want to visit with a particular friend, and maybe she’d like to go the museum with me.

It’s the people, less so the experience. When we go out to lunch, it’s not for the food (although it is nice to try new places), it’s for their company.

There are things we can talk about that we’d likely never do with anyone else. Sometimes it’s about the men in our lives, past and present. Some of us are moving from true partnerships onto the bumpy road of becoming caretakers. Or are grieving a loss. There are still our adult children to have concerns about or the grandchildren we are raising. Or health matters.

And there’s a lot of laughter, too, often at ourselves and just what it’s like these days to be what is kindly referred to as women of advanced glamour.

There are just things that women share with other women – and not in a gossipy way – for which there is no substitute.

Close woman-bonds now have a bit more of a time-sensitive quality to them and a greater understanding of the need for them. Not that many of us don’t have younger friends, too, but I feel more acutely the need to be among those who have shared the same time period in life. We can reference Vietnam, JFK and Martin Luther King’s assassinations, the Age of Aquarius and Dippity-do without having to explain to one another what we’re talking about.

I know a woman in her 40s whose daughter just had a baby girl and named her the same name as some rock stars of the 1950s and ’60s. I asked if the child was named for them. She said I was the second person who asked that, and that both she and her daughter had to Google the name to find out who we were talking about.

My peers would not only know the group’s name, but could rattle off several of their hits. Of course, age or length of time you’ve known a person aren’t what cements a friendship, but it does give you a common lens and shared passage through the same years, even if their journeys took them down a different road.

My best friend from childhood has died. Same for my best friend from junior high. Some good friends I’ve made during my working career, also gone, as are so many others. One was lost to dementia before sepsis stole her.

The circle grows smaller, and I realize how much I value the women in it and how much I want to enjoy their company, share their sorrows, smile together about everything we can and sometimes remark about these durn young’uns with their new-fangled ideas (you know, like we had back in the day).

It used to be that when I’d meet a friend for lunch and come home four hours later, my husband would ask bemusedly what we could possibly talk about for so long. Not that he really wanted to know the specifics, but he couldn’t imagine that much time just spent in conversation.

He no longer asks about the time spent as a gray-haired lady who lunches, as he knows I come home all the better for the visit with my friend.

There’s a greeting card I’ve seen that just warms me. It shows two older ladies on the front with the words stating, “We’ll be friends until we’re old and senile.” Inside the card, it says, “Then we’ll be new friends again.”

Sounds perfect to me.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net