A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. - Frank Crane
Making new friends is a little bit frightening, a little bit fun. At 68 and 75, our plans to move two hours from our tiny hometown to a big city meant making a whole new set of friends.
We'd made a few friends over the previous years through our daughter and her partner, and I'd reconnected with a college friend when our daughter met her at a neighborhood party -- turned out the friend lived next door. We've since been meeting at least once a month -- after all, we've got nearly 50 years to catch up on!
I joined a book club through Facebook even before we moved and then learned that it had been started by the mother of our next door neighbor at our former home so I already knew her -- she lives a mile from us now and we're the elders in the group. My first attendance at book club was a little scary especially when I realized that most of the members are my daughter's ages but they were very friendly. So there are a bunch of 40s-ish women and the two of us in our 60s, a very eclectic mix.
As a longtime sewist, I've found a great fabric store in our new neighborhood and am attending a weekly stitch social there. Again all ages, but I've learned that most of us just want to be friends no matter our ages,
My husband immediately began searching for a group of men who were meeting regularly and discovered one through an Episcopal church downtown. The group includes several Episcopal priests, a former Catholic priest, a lawyer, some businessmen, all with a wide range of interests like he does.
Most importantly, attending Cincinnati Friends Meeting has been our biggest -- and valuable -- decision. We were immediately welcomed and invited to attend a variety of activities. A lifetime member of a large Mennonite USA congregation in NW Ohio, I'd become discouraged with organized religion and was looking for something different, something that would feed my spiritual side. The idea of less routine and more silence was appealing and led us to the Quakers. CFM is semi-organized and silent worship is a core element.
When a hiking group formed within the Friends meeting, we joined and quickly found ourselves among friends. It's a wonderful feeling to know you can say what you think without fear of insulting someone. I've already learned much from these people and made some incredible friendships.
On our first hike, one woman mentioned that her cousin lived in our former hometown; when she named her, I laughed. Her cousin had lived one house away from us for the previous 25 years or so. That got us started on other connections -- she was also a lifetime Mennonite who had found a home at CFM only a few years earlier. We ended up playing the Mennonite game (IYKYK) for most of the hike.
It's been a good move and much of our happiness has come from meeting others we enjoy spending time with.
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