Friendship. We all need it in our lives, no matter our age.
I’ve read that when we’re younger, our friendships are influenced by so-called life tasks (finishing school, getting a job, raising a family). As we age, we tend to develop more cross-generational friendships. Then come our golden years, which are less about building new friendships than sustaining old ones.
That all strikes me as true, although, if I’m honest, it’s hard to remember back when.
To jog my memory, I once asked my grandson Britton to remind me how young people make friends. Seven years old at the time, here’s what he said:
“Start to know them …and start playing with them. Start talking about yourself. Tell them what you like, and you tell them what you don’t like. They might have something in common. Then they might say, ’Let’s be friends.’”
If only it were always that easy, no?
But that was in 2019, when Britton hung out with a neighbor of ours who happens to be his age. Back then, Britton and Illyana would play for hours, laughing at the same tasteless fart jokes, making You Tube videos of God-awful science experiments, sometimes just trying to escape their younger siblings, who were ‘annoying’.
Jump forward to 2023. Britton and Illyana walk home from the middle-school bus stop on opposite sides of the street. God help them, accidental eye contact might deem them ‘a couple’.
Could anything be more heinous than that?
Granted, Britton still goes over to Illyana’s house, but only to see if her younger brother Camden would like to shoot hoops.
Ah, the complexities of friendship. Always evolving. Often in beautiful strands of rainbow-colored silk. But sometimes in coarse, fickle bunches of scratchy burlap.
Through the years, I’ve experienced more silk than burlap. Lucky me, my friendships have crossed not just generational boundaries but gender and ethnic lines as well.
Some of my most precious friendships continue to be with other women, some met through neighborhood gatherings, church, and work. Others through book clubs or friends of friends—or even my kids.
Who would have guessed my kids’ friends might have moms I like hanging out with? And who would have predicted we’d form a foursome we called our Happy Hour? You know, like the Spice Girls, minus one member. Or maybe the Sex and the City Girls, minus the city. No, make that Thelma and Louise, squared. (Just without that one last crazy ride in the convertible.)
Seems just like that, our Happy Hour has morphed into something more reminiscent of the Golden Girls. I don’t know how or when that happened. I just know that I miss my girlfriends!
These past eight months, I feel like I’ve stood a better chance of finishing a marathon in record time than getting together with my own sweet Golden Girls. I can’t remember the last time all four of us got together. Maybe in 2021? Shoot, even though three out of four of us still live within two miles of one another, out of sixteen attempts to meet up in 2023, only two have worked out. TWO. (Superbowl Sunday with our guys. And an August dinner—again with the guys—for who knows what reason. Maybe because we all had the same open date on our calendar.)
May I make a confession? More than once, I’ve fretted my now Golden Girl friends no longer need me. Or worse, they no longer want to hang out as much. And you know what? Both those things are both probably true. Because long-time friendships don’t just happen. They happen when people grow older. And growing older brings new complexities to the mix, like illnesses—our own, our spouses’, our extended families’. Stomach bugs and vertigo. COVID-exposure and surgeries and physical therapy. And let's not forget crises with extended family and aging parents. Last-minute requests involving the grandkids. Even good things, like time to finally travel, have meant a cutback on our once-upon-a-time frequent gatherings.
But while I miss my friends, I’d hate if you pitied us.
Long-term friends make room for the ebbs and the flows, for those pockets when gatherings become sparse, for whatever reason. True friends make efforts to sustain what they’ve built.
And let me tell you, that takes work. Sometimes it almost seems easier to develop new friendships.
Almost.
As I write this, I’m preparing to attend a writers’ conference in Chicago. I look forward to seeing some new writing friends I met at last year’s conference—and making some even newer friends this year as well. I’m excited. But I’m nervous, too. What if I pack the wrong things to wear and look like a misfit? What if I can’t think of what to say, or worse, blurt out something inappropriate?
I don’t know if anything could be more heinous than that.
But I take comfort in knowing this: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Friendship remains important, no matter our age or stage in life, regardless of our gender or ethnicity. Whether rekindling old friendships or celebrating new ones, what’s not to love about small kindnesses swapped back and forth and over again?
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(Note: This one’s for the teachers. If it comes across as anti-public education, that’s not my intent. It may showcase my limited understanding of the law as I reference a Georgia House Bill as it relates to a teacher’s termination and her journey to get that decision reversed. So be it. It’ll definitely shine a light on my own past feelings and behaviors as a classroom teacher—sometimes rash and embarrassing, but oh, so human. And that, my friends, is my point. All teachers have superpowers. They make tough decisions each day. They excel. They fail. They’re human. So, teachers, I want you to know: I see you. I respect you. We need you. Here’s wishing you all the best!)
Recently, my daughter Quinn, who teaches kindergarten, brought up the book, My Shadow is Purple by Scott Stuart. A teacher here in Cobb County purchased a copy from her school’s book fair last spring and read it to her gifted fifth grade class. According to the book’s back cover, it’s a story that considers “gender beyond binary in a vibrant spectrum of color.”
A couple parents voiced concerns that the teacher’s sharing that book violated their rights under Georgia House Bill 1084. Passed in 2022, the bill bans educators from teaching so-called divisive concepts. The teacher who read the book was asked to resign or be terminated for violating HB 1084.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Quinn. “You didn’t read that book to your class, did you?”
“No, Mother.” She rolled her eyes at me. I could tell, even though we were talking on the phone.
“Actually,”—I felt my lips twitch, fighting off a wry smile—“it sounds more like something I would have done.”
And it does.
Back in 2003, after years as an at-home parent, I felt called to go back to teaching. A friend who had done the same thing warned me the lay of the land had become very different.
“It used to be 80 percent creativity and 20 percent B.S.,” she said. “These days that’s flip-flopped.”
Still, I felt that calling. I went back to school for linguistics and Brit Lit, the classes required for my recertification. Then I pulled together a portfolio containing my resume, teaching philosophy, and a writing sample—a critique of Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. And I interviewed for positions.
Wonder of wonders, I landed a job teaching middle school language arts--three sixth-grade sections and two at the seventh-grade level. Giddy, I signed my contract mere days before school started. Off the bat, I learned the language arts lead instructor was on leave with a newborn. Her stand-in replacement, overwhelmed, stumbled to know how to help me except to say that textbooks were backordered with no teacher editions on hand. And then I found out a PTA scandal the previous year meant no discretionary funds for classroom supplies. I hadn’t expected much, but this meant nada.
I dug in, determined to answer my calling. And maybe I could have, if I’d just had more time. But I didn’t.
From the get-go, time was not on my side. My personal planning period got filled by team meetings. At lunch time, I—like my fellow faculty members—got half an hour to wolf down my own food while watching the kids do the same. In-service days focused on accreditation assignments and discipline how-tos. Granted, I needed the latter. Kids were different from when I’d last faced a classroom, fifteen years earlier. Yet I had no mentor assigned to me because—well, I wasn’t a new teacher. I just felt like one.
In the classroom, the range of maturity, learning styles, and abilities stunned me. I had core curriculum guides to follow, with timelines and standards designed to “encourage the highest achievement in every student.” It didn’t sit well with me, introducing new lessons before previous ones got mastered. But time demanded it. Standards had to be met. Reaccreditation depended on it.
Time—well, also age—continued to work against me personally, too. A doctor who looked fourteen diagnosed my prolific, long-lasting menstrual periods as symptoms of perimenopause. I couldn’t thank him enough. It was easy to purchase and stash massive amounts of super-plus feminine hygiene products. Finding enough student-free moments to tend to my business proved more challenging.
On the homefront, my own kids faced challenges, too. We teachers were told not to use our personal cell phones in class, so I told my kiddos to call my school office in case of emergency. The day one of my daughters called, the office failed to let me know. I was livid. But what could I say? One of the front-office clerks had called out, suffering side effects from chemotherapy.
Here I was, eight weeks into the school year, twenty pounds down (stress), and living on five hours of sleep a night (from planning and grading and filling out answer keys into the wee hours). My own kiddos no longer counted on me when they suffered a personal crisis. I was having too many of my own.
Around this time, one of my sixth grade students—let’s call him Benjamin—came into class in rare form, making jokes and asides every time I started to talk to the class. Finally, I'd had it.
“Benjamin!” I pointed a finger at him. “Shut the hell up.”
A little girl in the front row gasped. My heart cracked, seeing her brow furrow and her face go slack. I liked that girl. Shoot, I cared about them all, even Benjamin. But there was no undoing my deed.
“That’s right.” I squeezed my fists and shook them. “I said it. I said hell, hell, hell, hell, hell.”
Each time I repeated the word, I stomped a foot, left then right and repeat, until I’d completed my tantrum. Then I wrote Benjamin up for class disruption and sent him to the principal’s office.
Bless my naive little heart. Benjamin told the principal what happened (!), and I got reprimanded. Understandably so. But that day I went home with a realization: This middle school teaching gig wasn’t working. I never dreamed I’d break a contract, but that’s what I did. Over tears that night, I typed up my letter of resignation.
Three weeks later, I walked out of that middle school’s doors one last time. I spent months mourning how I couldn’t cut it. Years later, when Quinn went to college, I told her: “You think you’d like teaching? Well, take time to weigh all your options. It’s harder than most folks will ever know.”
Quinn remembered my struggles. She opted to study interior design—for a semester, maybe two. But the call of the classroom persisted, luring her back to her passion.
She’s taught at the same elementary school now for nine years. I’ve watched her superpowers grow. God willing, they’ll keep on eclipsing her more human moments.
Given time, I like to think I could’ve grown into a decent teacher, too. Sometimes I think bizarre circumstances and timing rigged my chances. Other times I blame the public education system. And then there’s this: Maybe I just couldn’t cut it. I have to accept that I’ll never know.
What I do know is this: Teaching is hard, hard, hard. That’s why I salute all the teachers out there with a virtual hug and a THANK YOU! Teachers: May your superpowers carry you through your toughest days, and may this year be one of your best ever.
Cheers ~ J
It’s official. In July, Rice and I finished Our Fifty-State Project by visiting Alaska. Watch for 49 good things—some observations, some pics—about our trip in my July newsletter, coming out Monday, July 31st.
For now I’d like to muse on the 50th good thing I discovered during our trip to Alaska.
It started when my cousin Beth reached out, suggesting that Rice and I join her and three others on a ten-day cruise to Alaska. Hmmmm, ten days? Based on our history, we aren’t big cruise fans. Not to mention we prefer solo travel. But Alaska was on our bucket list—part of Our Fifty-State Project—and what better way to see different parts of the state than to take a cruise?
The other carrot about this particular trip? It would re-introduce me to another cousin I barely knew. Our fathers, along with Beth’s dad, were brothers. We fell out of touch when, as a toddler, I lost my dad, Douglas Putnam, in an accident. When my mom remarried shortly afterward, I got folded into Harold Heidrich’s family, with two older step-sisters and, eventually, two younger half-sisters, too. Life went on.
During my preschool years, I maintained a special relationship with Grandma Putt, spending the night at her place often. We’d drink tea from one of her mismatched but fancy cup-and-saucer sets and wash the dishes together afterward. I winced as she gave herself twice-daily insulin shots, but I learned a little about life—like how to like grapefruit with sweetener at breakfast the same way that she did.
I was in elementary school when I first learned my mom and dad weren’t getting along when he died. “We probably would have gotten a divorce,” Mom said. This caught my breath, but I nodded when she suggested I not mention this talk to Grandma. “Just tell her you’re sure that your dad was a nice man.”
Grandma Putt passed away when I was in the sixth grade. Shortly after that, my mom, a widow again, moved my younger sisters and me from the village of Caro to the larger town of Saginaw. Again, life went on. I grew up as a Heidrich, stouter and paler than the rest, but we were family. That’s all I knew.
In my fifties—my fifties, for heaven’s sake!—I got a call from my mother to tell me my father had been a sonofabitch at times. Whoa. Mom had clearly been in the cups and was in no shape to explain more at that moment. But over time, I learned more specifics about her call. And my dad’s death.
To the best of my knowledge, the fatal single-car crash that killed him occurred in the wee hours after a night of drinking. My mom was home with me. My dad’s mistress, who survived the crash, was driving.
It’s now been over sixty years since my dad’s death. My mom’s been gone herself for eleven of those years. I trust she finally rests free of the deep shame and bitterness she obviously carried over what happened. I never picked up a huge animosity between her and the Putnams. (Her and my dad, yes. But not his family.) Over the years, I haven’t had a lot of contact with that branch of the family. A few Putnam aunts sent gifts when I started having babies. A cousin attended Mom’s celebration of life. Another cousin sent me a cup and saucer from Grandma Putt’s set when her own mom passed.
Then several years ago, my cousin Beth—a Putnam who’s never met a stranger—reached out to ask if she and her husband Sam could stop by while traveling through the Southeast. “Sure,” I said, pushing away my shy inclination to make an excuse. They joined Rice and me for dinner, and we clicked, enough so to pay them (and my Aunt Patty) a visit when we traveled out West in 2021. I’m glad we did. Aunt Patty died in 2022.
But back to 2023. And Alaska. I felt nervous about meeting my cousin Gary. “No worries,” Rice assured me. “Even if you don’t really mesh, we’ll still have Alaska.”
How right he was. Alaska delivered, in amazing fashion. Forty-nine good things, as I mentioned earlier.
But for now, here’s the 50th:
I was bowled over to meet Gary, five years my senior, who almost immediately said, “Your dad and Beth’s dad”—the youngest brothers—“used to toss me around when I was little just like a football.”
I smiled as I envisioned that picture of a family I never really knew.
“Another story,” Gary said. “Your dad was not a big guy. But he was strong. And Beth’s dad [Uncle Keith] had a mouth on him.” Gary’s eyes twinkled, and so did Beth’s. “Sometimes Keith would be out at the bars, talk trash to someone, and then get the snot beat out of him.” Gary paused. “But the next night, Keith would take your dad back to the bar to even the score.”
Oh…my. I’m not sure whether I was more tickled or mortified to hear that. I just know that it moved me.
And isn’t that the very point of sharing our stories? To create emotional connection and maybe even lend understanding to others’ behaviors?
Gary—and Beth—shared plenty more stories, and I loved hearing them. They didn’t explain all the gaps I have from childhood memories, but I didn’t expect them to. In fact, I’d venture we all have gaps.
Anyway, here’s one last story, maybe my favorite:
“I was helping your dad on the farm,” Gary told me. “When we finished some chores—I don’t know, maybe milking the cow or something—he turned to me and said, ‘I should go in and check on Janet.’”
That jolted me from the story. Until I remembered Janet was me. Long, long ago, I was Janet Putnam.
“I’m not sure if your mom was napping or what,” Gary continued. “But you were in the cradle, fussing. And your dad picked you up, changed your diaper, and then rocked you until you went back to sleep.”
Granted, this snip of a story could lead to other questions. Like where was my mom? And who watched me after I got placed back in the cradle?
But that’s not the point. The point is the story itself. It filled in some gaps. It re-lit a spark of a father’s love I never realized I was missing. I can’t put into words how much that spark has meant to me.
Because let’s get real. We all have unexplained memories and gaps, parts of our inner child we take to our grave.
What a gift it is when part of the inner child we once linked with shame gets transcended by love.
Hugs to friends and family—all of you all! J
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