Today one of the strategy gamer dads from my inner tier of friends surprised me by gifting me a subscription to an online board game platform. It was an act of spontaneous generosity from someone who knows me well enough to know I wouldn't buy it for myself.
We met when his family moved to our area 9 years ago, and our daughters immediately grew close. It was sweet to watch - his daughter would stay in the minivan with her mom until my daughter arrived (walking to school). Then the former would exit the car and beeline for the latter, and they'd enter the schoolyard together.
I bring this up because one of my closest friends in the community is a friend I made through our children. I didn't realize it at the time, but the window for meeting new friends through your kids is small. For us, it was primarily during elementary school, although we've found new communities of friends through intermediate school (math club parents) and high school (basketball parents, drama parents), but the selection is smaller and the time to make new friends is receding.
Which is why the way we spent last weekend was such a refreshing experience. We made new adult friends, and they're great.
Last autumn, we attended my college reunion (it was a large, round number of years since graduation) and caught up with old friends. At one event, a catered lunch, we spent so much time chatting at the service line that most of the tables were full by the time we emerged to find seating.
We scrambled into a free couple of chairs at a table where we didn't know the alumni, and ended up having a memorable conversation with a couple who had just dropped their youngest of two off at college and were staring at the void of the empty nest and asking what comes next.
We had just been in the thick of the college application slog with our eldest when we departed for my reunion, and were wondering what lay around the corner for us in a few years when our youngest left as well. The conversation felt like we'd met versions of ourselves a few years down the line, with a lot of the same challenges.
They struggled with mid-career fatigue, a sense of purpose, and reconciling dreams from their youth with middle aged realities in terms of personal goals and internal motivation.
We all looked ahead trying to reorient our lives without the kids as the center - how could we double down on deepening friendships and family bonds, fulfilling obligations to aging parents, making space for creative outlets and capitalizing on health through delayed goals to travel or see distant loved ones.
We shared a sense that life had grown more fragile - looking through the contacts in our phones were names affected by untimely deaths and life-altering diagnoses. There was no saying how much longer we'd dodge those bullets.
Our conversation went on for over an hour, and we exchanged information at the end. We did not see them again before departing reunion the next morning, but the high of the interaction left us glowing for several days after. We both lived in LA, but traffic and effort posed definite obstacles to an ongoing friendship.
Fast forward to another traveling alumni event that came to town a month later, and once more we met up at the venue (an hour away from our respective homes) and enjoyed the camaraderie of our life-stage dopplegangers between light hors d'oeuvres and lectures.
We decided to take the next step and make our next gathering intentional rather than waiting for alumni events as a pretext to see one another, so we planned a weekend lunch several weeks in advance.
Last weekend, after an hour's drive by each couple, we connected once again over delicious Brazilian food. The entire drive over we were giddy like grade-schoolers: "We're going on a playdate with our new friends!"
As middle-age places more constraints (physical, cognitive, professional, filial, temporal) on our ability to meet new people, it feels like the greatest form of abundance to forge friendships from scratch and sustain those connections.
Speaking recently to a colleague at work whom I look up to and admire, I commented on this individual's high emotional intelligence and ability to connect with strangers. Their reply caught me off guard: Yes, they admitted, they are quick to form friendships, but they are never deep friendships.
I've thought of those words, delivered tinged with regret, as a rallying cry as my wife and me try to cement our relationships and grow deeper roots over the coming years.