Friendships... something funny to think on
I am a big fan of Paul Reiser's books. Familyhood is out and it is good to laugh, even if it is at myself. The first thing in his book was a perspective on friendships during the season of raising a family. It caught me off guard because it was a more serious comment and it is how I often feel. His parents were a bit extreme (if, in fact, they actually did this) but life does seem to feel this way sometimes. I don't wanna wait twenty-five years to spend time with my friends either. If you have any ideas on how to fit it all in, please enlighten me!!!
"When they were well into their sixties, my parents renewed friendships with some of their old friends. These were close friends from their school days, friends from old neighborhoods - good friends that I had no recollection of ever having met growing up. Where had these people been? I wondered. If they were such good friends, how come I never heard of them?
My parents' simple explanation was that they had all drifted apart when they were busy raising their families, but now that the kids were older, they had picked up the friendships again.
This was fascinating to me. First of all, the drifting apart. It's not like any of them moved to the North Pole; they were all pretty close by, but they somehow managed to never see each other.
Secondly - I didn't know you could do that with friendship; put them on hold for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years, and then just start right up again.
And I had no idea that having kids and doing simple day-to-day stuff was so all-encompassing that it could necessitate putting entire friendships - good friendships - on hold.
Well, that's kind of how I feel about this book. I wrote two books before this; the first one about meeting and marrying my beautiful wife, the second one about the journey before, during, and after having a baby.
That was fifteen years ago. In that time, our infant firstborn became fifteen, his brother - now ten - joined the team, and a gazillion day-to-day things had to be dealt with: there were the countless hectic meals where nobody sits down at the same time, frantic rushes to start school reports that should have been finished weeks earlier, knees that needed bandaging and glasses that needed finding - even though they were "right there" five minutes ago - and more arguments than you can imagine about why long pants were in order even though, yes, shorts are more comfortable. My point is - things got busy around here.
Along the way, there were certainly plenty of things that occurred to me, observations I might have written down for, say, a book about having kids, but I couldn't because I was too busy (and exhausted by) having those very same kids.
I'd like to say that somehow the clouds have lifted a bit and there seems to be a moment of relative quiet. In truth, things are only going faster. Life is, if anything, crazier than before.
But I realized that my boys are probably closer in time to when they'll leave our house than the time we first brought them home. Whatever I may feel about time, it's going ahead. And I don't want to wait twenty-five years to reconnect with my friends."
"When they were well into their sixties, my parents renewed friendships with some of their old friends. These were close friends from their school days, friends from old neighborhoods - good friends that I had no recollection of ever having met growing up. Where had these people been? I wondered. If they were such good friends, how come I never heard of them?
My parents' simple explanation was that they had all drifted apart when they were busy raising their families, but now that the kids were older, they had picked up the friendships again.
This was fascinating to me. First of all, the drifting apart. It's not like any of them moved to the North Pole; they were all pretty close by, but they somehow managed to never see each other.
Secondly - I didn't know you could do that with friendship; put them on hold for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years, and then just start right up again.
And I had no idea that having kids and doing simple day-to-day stuff was so all-encompassing that it could necessitate putting entire friendships - good friendships - on hold.
Well, that's kind of how I feel about this book. I wrote two books before this; the first one about meeting and marrying my beautiful wife, the second one about the journey before, during, and after having a baby.
That was fifteen years ago. In that time, our infant firstborn became fifteen, his brother - now ten - joined the team, and a gazillion day-to-day things had to be dealt with: there were the countless hectic meals where nobody sits down at the same time, frantic rushes to start school reports that should have been finished weeks earlier, knees that needed bandaging and glasses that needed finding - even though they were "right there" five minutes ago - and more arguments than you can imagine about why long pants were in order even though, yes, shorts are more comfortable. My point is - things got busy around here.
Along the way, there were certainly plenty of things that occurred to me, observations I might have written down for, say, a book about having kids, but I couldn't because I was too busy (and exhausted by) having those very same kids.
I'd like to say that somehow the clouds have lifted a bit and there seems to be a moment of relative quiet. In truth, things are only going faster. Life is, if anything, crazier than before.
But I realized that my boys are probably closer in time to when they'll leave our house than the time we first brought them home. Whatever I may feel about time, it's going ahead. And I don't want to wait twenty-five years to reconnect with my friends."
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