Betty, a good friend, and I drove down to Hingham, MA yesterday to visit another good friend, Jean, who is living at Lindon Ponds. After a trip to the bank, which Jean needed to take, we went to her apartment. We had time before lunch to catch up with all the news of our lives and the news of our children. Then we went to the dining room and enjoyed lunch. Jean served us dessert in her apartment and we discussed current news of the world, our mothers and the NYTimes Mother's Day contest describing your mother in six words, the experience of growing older, books we were reading, changes taking place in the church, and our participation in LIRA (Learning in Retirement Association). We shared our mutual desire to learn as much as we could about the world in which we live and our deepening curiosity as we grow older. It was a very pleasant day and we made plans to visit again.
I met Betty 30 years ago when I went to St. John's Episcopal Church. She was the organist and choir director then and she invited me to join the choir and I did. Several years later we met Jean when she and her husband joined the church. Paul had been a Deacon and they had lived in India for several years. After Paul died, Jean continued to invite friends to dinner and we watched a movie afterwards, usually a foreign film with subtitles. Then on a trip to Portugal with one of her sons and his family, Jean fell and broke her leg. It required a long convalescence and a new life-style, so she moved to Lindon Ponds.
Our conversation concluded with our thoughts on the value of friendships. And we agreed that long-standing friendships were wonderful but that we had to make new friends as well since, sadly, we had reached an age when friends had begun to move away or to die. A friend with whom we have shared so many experiences is warm and comforting but we need also to have younger friends to challenge us and with whom we can share new experiences. While we live, we need to live fully and to seek new ways of doing things and not to give into doing things just because we have always done it that way!
