Disclaimer: the photos accompanying this post have nothing to do with the post's subject. Find a description at the end.
Until we moved from Maryland to New Hampshire I had never given any thought to how I made friends. Throughout my life it has just happened. People from attending school and college. Neighbors I played with. People I worked with or met through church, volunteer activities, and from living in proximity to.
I've never been especially good at maintaining long friendships since I moved a lot when I was young. I know no one from childhood or high school. I do stay in contact a couple times of year with my freshman college roommate (she reads this blog, she tells me, to keep up with what I'm up to.)
When I quit working for the government in 1985 I kept in contact with one woman who lived in Columbia too but since that friendship was based upon work experiences it didn't last. I have several teacher friends though we all live away from MD now. Getting together and staying in touch is difficult.
In moving away I left one important friendship, one which goes back to when our children were very young, which I will keep through the distance. Other new friendships were made at Vantage House where we lived which we hope we can maintain.
But how to make new friends now?
Living in Covid times, we aren't meeting the neighbors. In the two plus months we've lived here we have not even seen who lives on either side of us or across the hall. Learned today that the people under us sleep during the day because they complained to Management about the noise - that would have been granddaughter "pouncing" and jumping on the floor on Tuesday afternoon.
There look to be people of our generation in this community but people don't speak from behind masks except to nod or mutter hello.
Neither of us work or volunteer yet so there's no chance of friendships from those experiences. We are church goers but churches aren't meeting in person or if they are, there are limits to the number.
We'd tried two different churches online, one on the Lebanon green and one in Hanover at Dartmouth. Neither did it for us entirely. Then I saw another church was having a BBQ chicken drive-through dinner sale. We went. Then looked up the church online. We listened to recordings of church services.
I sent an email asking to be put on the email list of notices which is what I did with the other two churches. Sunday I called the church to find out how to listen to their service for Sunday and spoke to the pastor. She followed up Monday with a response to my email and then we chatted on Tuesday.
I got invited to a parking lot gathering of the Women's group for Thursday morning at 9 am.
I went this morning! I think this will work to meet and make friends. It will take time but I have that.
Ever thought about how you make friends?
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Explanation of the photos: There must be a scarecrow contest going on in Enfield, NH. There are many more on the street throughout the town. I captured the ones we saw when we walked on the Northern Rail Trail portion that's in Enfield. The rail trail starts here near us and goes all the way to Concord. The photo above is a post leftover from when it was a railroad. It's saying there are 11 miles to White River Junction, VT. The lake you see is Mascoma Lake which feeds the Mascoma River which runs outside our windows here to the Connecticut River.
