There's a big difference between making friends as a child and making them as an adult.
In childhood, proximity and shared age do the heavy lifting, placing neighbors, school friends, fellow church members or anyone going through the same phase of life as you firmly in the "friend" category.
That's how I got my longest standing friend, Maggie. It's our friendiversary. Friendaversary? No matter. Today we're celebrating 30 years of friendship.
We met in Cindy Snowden's first grade class. We called our teacher Snow White, not just because of her name but her dark hair, which she wore in a bob.
I was the new kid who had just been transferred from Searcy schools and was suddenly feeling very small and shy. Maggie knew everyone. Her movements and voice were loud, unchecked. She had stinky little brothers, and I had stinky little nephews, all about the same ages. Our mothers were both teachers at the school, giving us lots of shared time running the halls after hours and making our own games.
Maggie quickly found ways to draw me out of my shell, and by Mrs. Prothro's second grade class, we were getting marks on our report cards for talking too much.
As an adult, I've found it takes a lot more effort to include someone in the particular pattern of my life, which now revolves around family, work and any hobby or activity I manage to do in my downtime. The whole process takes a lot more intention.
That is what surprised me most about adult life as I got deeper into it -- any friendship you care about making and keeping takes an investment not unlike a romantic relationship. It takes similar effort, thought and care.
Luckily we're not so limited by location. With social media, FaceTime and the rise of Zoom, I can stay in touch with friends no matter where they live -- my exchange student sisters who lived with me in high school but are now in other parts of the world, my college buddies who live on opposite ends of the country or my friends who live back home.
Age also doesn't matter so much. In my closest circle of friends now, we span roughly 35 to 75. We're connected not so much by the place that we live, since we're scattered all over the region, as by our shared love of written word, a feminist bent, and good taste in snacks and wine.
Reaching 30 years with my childhood best friend has been no small matter. Each phase of life has meant a change in the dynamics of our friendship, from the shifting of carefree elementary days to the minefield of middle school; the distance created when she went off to math and science high school and I stayed behind; our separate ways as we chose colleges, and then navigating how we interacted when we moved to the same city and incorporated each other into circles with our new friends.
There were years of unfolding, where we talked little or none due to lack of time as we finished college or threw ourselves into work, as we faced the challenges of distance or commitments to a partner. And years when we came back together, newly grateful for each other's steady presence.
I've got two friend dates in the next few weeks that have taken months of careful planning as we take into consideration our children's nap schedules, their school performances, our work duties, homemaking, babysitters' availability and more.
But the end result will be worth it when we have a few uninterrupted hours to share and laugh freely at the joys and sorrows of our lives.