My husband was happy to watch sports on TV all day with beer in hand, so I could do my thing without interruption.  This was an important time for me to recharge my batteries.  I worked in a job where I was one-on-one with a steady stream of people, mostly young women, counselling them on how to feed and care for their young children.  Never having had one of my own, the two-year olds that often accompanied them really tried my patience at times.  I can say now that I have been retired for almost 8 years that the best thing about being retired is not having to cope with 2 year olds.

But the worst thing is not having meaningful conversations with adults either on a regular basis.  I went from 8 or more interactions a day to less than 8 a month!  For someone who has always been considered a talker, that is quite a shock.  When I look back I can see how much I enjoyed working with most of those moms.  So it is a real treat when I occasionally see them around town and they recognize me and recall our conversations from many years ago.  It reminds me why I chose dietetics as a profession, and makes me feel like I did make a small difference in people’s lives.

However, I can also look back and see that it was that selfish desire to be alone on the weekends that caused me to have no close friends now.  Sure, there are people in town that I call “friends”, but none that just drop by to say hi, or call to invite me over for dinner, or to go to a concert or go shopping with them.  There are no backyard barbecues any more either.  I should have seen this coming, because just before I retired I took off a week every month during the summer to have craft parties.

I spent the whole week each time preparing.  First there was beading, then painting flower pots, and last we made tie dye shirts and towels.  I invited about ten girls to each party, but each time only one or two came, the others were too busy with their own weekend activities to be bothered to attend my small gathering.  I had planned a fourth party to make miniature wooden clocks, but I cancelled it because of the poor response to the other parties. The one neighbor who did come every time knew how important it was to come. She was an elderly lady who herself had put on her annual large winter solstice bash one year, but my husband and I were the only ones who came.  Afterwards, everyone else said that because it was always such a big party they figured no one would miss them......

I should have known after my own party fiasco that the handwriting was on the wall for my retirement to be a solo event.  That was not my first party failure either.  Once a few years earlier I had invited several neighbors for New Year’s Eve, and they all agreed to come.   Only a few of them did make a brief appearance, however,  and all of them were expected at home or somewhere else to actually “watch the ball fall” or to “burn the Christmas tree at midnight”. My party was definitely at the bottom of everyone’s priority list, so my husband and I rang in the New Year alone, as usual, but this time with lots of snacks and party favors.

He passed away shortly after I retired, so I have since then crawled into my shell and learned to be happy alone.  Like the young blogger that started me thinking on this subject, I have never been comfortable at parties, even when I attended a large university that has always been thought of as a party school.  I must confess, I did down my share of Red Mountain while lounging around evening campfires on the beach, but I would have been much happier sitting on the bed in a dorm room with two or three other girls discussing how to solve the problems of the world….. 

Thanks to Facebook, I have been able to reconnect with many classmates from long ago, although most still remain merely Facebook contacts. However, my best friend from grade school was a notable exception.  Although we lived far apart, we often exchanged newsy emails, and we made an effort to talk on the phone or visit each other as often as we could.  And when we were together it was like we had never been apart. Our connection was obvious to everyone. In fact, often people who saw us together wondered if we were sisters. And we thought so much alike that it was scary, even after 30 years of separation. I thank my angels regularly for my time with her these past few years, because she passed away last fall.  I really miss her.

Everyone needs a friend like that, so if you already have one, please do not let your connection get side-tracked by the frenzy of today’s work-a-day world, or allow it to slowly fade and eventually become lost in the ether of time.  Do your best NOW to cement that closeness that will have a value in the distant future that you cannot yet see or even imagine. Do not depend only on texting and social media for this either, as they can’t begin to equal the value that is gained from real face to face togetherness.

My heartfelt message to all the young folks who read this is to do these 3 things:  Do not burn your bridges;  Keep the people you care about high on your priority list;  And always make a special effort to share with them the time they deserve. Take it from someone who has been there,  if you do these 3  things  it will pay rich dividends to you one day.