Throughout my many years of spinning around the sun celebrating my birth, I have found that friendships are like an onion. There is a layer of experiences with each person who you form a friendship with. The evolution of friendships comes in stages. A casual friend develops into a close friend and then if you are lucky, you can be one of the few who has friends for half a century. That is the friendship lottery!

During childhood, sharing the same activities and interests is the connection. Who skates faster or rides the bike longer or “Can I eat at your house; I hate my mom’s cooking?” are at the top of the list for a child. They are not checking off boxes just yet. Let them share a chocolate cake with you and that is all it takes to have a close friend. When we reach adulthood, that is when it becomes complicated. Our attitudes, values and beliefs start forming in the chemistry arena. One tends to be more selective about who to spend time with. Boxes are starting to have check marks, and we can throw some friends to the curb that don’t make us feel good. As young adults, we just want to have a crowd around us. 

The work it takes to form friendships becomes hit-and-miss in our adult years. We start connecting with people who show an interest in us. We are not so centered during our early adult years and often select quantity over quality when picking a friend. We need to have as many friends as possible. The “pack” has formed and so we cast some people to the wayside or keep some. It is the keepers who we hope stick with us during our lifetime. That requires a tremendous amount of interest and energy in a person to have the keeper by your side. People move, they relocate, they marry someone you cannot stand, they have different politics, or you cannot put up with their families. It’s life and the onion is unraveling. 

There are times in our lives when friends become dormant and that is where the energy and interest must exit to hold on to a “keeper.” If you want a keeper, I have learned you must stay in touch regularly. Even if it is a one-line text “Hey, how are you?” or a quick phone call, you must touch base. You are doing this because you want to, you care and are truly interested in how that person is doing. It is a way of saying “I am here for you.” You get what you pay for in life and if you don’t touch base, you become invisible. 

During our middle and older years, friendships run their course, and some begin to fade. We don’t need boxes to check anymore. Our interests and priorities align in a different way. We now seek those heart-to-heart talks with our friend. Your inner circle becomes smaller but stronger. Kindness and support take the front row in friendship during our older years. Honesty and trust, support and caring enter during our older years. The onion becomes more fragile.

It is inevitable that as we age, health problems arise. That is when we begin to count on one another during our friendships. Friends become a precious commodity. We depend on one another much more for support at that stage in life. I belong to a wonderful group of five women who meet regularly for coffee each week. We all book our doctor’s appointments around these coffee dates because they mean so much to us. At times, we even take each other to doctor’s appointments because we care, and they are our family. We are all full of wisdom in that we share life experiences, plus no one will be thrown to the curb at this stage in life. Please do remember as a footnote that the five of us also know how to make a fabulous martini with three olives! We are all in a better mood after coffee and a sweet dessert. I cherish the times where we all laugh so loud in the coffee shop everyone hears us. It is after coffee time is over that I walk outside, get in my car and before turning on the motor, a warm feeling is in my heart. I realize how precious those moments were with my friends.