No New Friends

A long time ago, when I worked as a reporter for People magazine I had a co-worker, Leah, who used to say that her Rolodex was full. For those of you who don’t remember life before Smart Phones, a Rolodex is where we used to keep our contacts. What Leah meant was that she was at her maximum friend capacity and wasn’t interested in expansion. I took her comment as a joke, but she wasn’t joking.

It’s taken my a while, but I’m there now. There are my intimates–real friends and then there are lots of other people who I just like: my dog friends, mommy friends, couple friends, writer friends. There isn’t enough time to attend to all of these relationships, much less new friendships.

A few of the old ones friends, the too needy, too angry and too clueless about their issues, have had to be cleared from the hard drive. I hate feeling like I’m cutting people off, but it becomes about being a friend to me. Another former colleague, Jill, used to say that she wouldn’t be friends with any one who hadn’t been in therapy. Amen.

We’re all crazy in our own way. I just need you to deal with your crazy because I deal with mine. For those who don’t and just want to drop all their crazy on me makes me feel like I have a neighbor who continues to throw his dog poop on my lawn. You gotta deal with your own poop. If you poop on my lawn it’s fine, but after a while it’s too much.

Last week I ran into a woman with whom I’d been friendly with for the last five or six years. A dog group friend. I like her and we’ve had good conversations over the years, as have all of us in the group. I hadn’t seen her since her surgery and had been meaning to drop her a note, stop by, call, something, but I just didn’t get around to it. Each time it ran across my mind, the thought would get caught between 10,000 other shoulds, ought tos or gottas. When I ran into her the other day, she was a little chilly. I felt a little bad, but I had to acknowledge, I just can’t give to everybody who I like.

Another woman, whom I am sister-mother friends with, said the other day that we all have lots of balls in the air.

“Some are rubber balls and some are glass. We just can’t drop the glass ones, the rubber ones we can let fall.”

My glass balls are my husband, two children, my elderly father and two friends; several other intimate girlfriends are plexiglass, sometimes they  hit the floor but the thing about the intimates is that they don’t complain if a phone call doesn’t get returned asap or a dinner gets cancelled. Real friends understand each others heart and treat it gently.  Cliff used to  always tell Baldwin, real friends make you feel good.

I’m genuinely interested in different kinds of people. I like to know what makes folk go–especially people who follow their own path, but even the ones who seem tight and traditional, I often find that they are not what they appear to be.  I love making that discovery.

My husband, daughter and my friend Eleanore, an introvert, love teasing me about how I will ask someone I’ve just met a hundred questions. I like to think that people simply feel comfortable opening up to me.

What I don’t do anymore is pursue or allow myself to be pursued by a new interesting person for coffee, lunch or a drink. If they suggest it, I nicely, sometimes, awkwardly, decline;  there’s always something else I’m committed to even if it’s just puttering in the house, staring or indulging in my favorite sweet idle time.

But I am having lunch on Wednesday with a French woman I recently met a luncheon. Sometimes, I guess, you can squeeze in one new person. It is just lunch and I have a feeling her Rolodex is also full.