I rechecked the meaning of estrange to see if it fit with a friendship that I used to walk with once a week before Covid. Wanda is a woman I knew slightly at work. Both of us retired at least ten years ago. She had started coming to a book group I ran at the local library when I retired and the group continued without my presence afterwards.
She lives two blocks from me and for a few years before Covid we walked together once a week in the neighborhood. During those walks, we talked a lot about our friends and families, everyday things going on. She started inviting my husband and I to join her for Christmas where she and her husband camped at a nearby lake on the holiday. They always invited friends who had no immediate family to celebrate Christmas with. She even invited my brother if he was in town en route to his annual Australian vacation.
Covid struck! Walks ceased. We all struggled to decide what contact to have with others. Our walks never resumed. These days I never see her although we have were invited to their Christmas meal again last year and did attend.
It’s hard to say why that relationship faded out. Perhaps it had run its course. I picked up new walking partners who also live nearby and I am thinking of not attending their annual Christmas dinner. There’s less and less to talk about. In some ways, I’d like to know how her relatives are or where mutual work friends are, but not enough to pick up that book again.
The quarantine that Covid launched made many of us rethink our relationships, our involvement in groups that we had previously spent a lot of energy on. This relationship fell away easily and wasn’t very deep. I am ok with that.
As someone once said, friendships are for a reason, a season or a lifetime. This one might have been for a season, now over.
— Oxnard15
She lives two blocks from me and for a few years before Covid we walked together once a week in the neighborhood. During those walks, we talked a lot about our friends and families, everyday things going on. She started inviting my husband and I to join her for Christmas where she and her husband camped at a nearby lake on the holiday. They always invited friends who had no immediate family to celebrate Christmas with. She even invited my brother if he was in town en route to his annual Australian vacation.
Covid struck! Walks ceased. We all struggled to decide what contact to have with others. Our walks never resumed. These days I never see her although we have were invited to their Christmas meal again last year and did attend.
It’s hard to say why that relationship faded out. Perhaps it had run its course. I picked up new walking partners who also live nearby and I am thinking of not attending their annual Christmas dinner. There’s less and less to talk about. In some ways, I’d like to know how her relatives are or where mutual work friends are, but not enough to pick up that book again.
The quarantine that Covid launched made many of us rethink our relationships, our involvement in groups that we had previously spent a lot of energy on. This relationship fell away easily and wasn’t very deep. I am ok with that.
As someone once said, friendships are for a reason, a season or a lifetime. This one might have been for a season, now over.
— Oxnard15
What will be put at the feet of Covid? Your writing here has a sadness and relief and resignation and relief. Real Life.
ReplyDeleteOxnard...You may have written about a universal human experience-- something that happens whether due to COVID or not. During the pandemic, I actually FORMED very intense new friendships online at Zoom open mics for music. I thought I'd care about these people forever, but now they're back to doing live open mics in their New England state, and I don't see them. I wonder. if I showed up at their actual REAL LIFE door(s) would they recognize me? (...from "Macoff")
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