Fare thee well

I hate to say it, but I think it's over. "It" being a friendship that I predicted as in it's waning days. (I'd even link to that orignal blog blathering but I'm too lazy to root through my archives to find it.) What started back in 9th grade Western Civ class has come to an end at the feet of two very different children. Frankly, the cause saddens me more than the loss itself.

This wasn't a surprise. We've been through this sort of thing before. Every time our life heads in a bit of a different direction, N pulls away. She did when she started dating her husband and I was still happily single. She did it when her oldest arrived and I was married without kids. And now that our kids are developing their own, very different personalities she's done it again.

It'd take a fool to deny that playdates don't work for us. When we get together her boys go one way, my kids go the other. Logan is outgoing and energetic. Her recently turned 4-year old is shy and calm. He prefers staying by his big sister's side or watching one of his shows to following Logan into the mass of toys. Big sister on the other hand, has reached the age where she has little interest in the exploits of 3-verging-of-4-year old boys. She's not often around for these get togethers. The littlest brother, a month younger than Meg, shows signs of being more like his brother than his lively sister. Meg, if you've not noticed, is a firecracker.

These are five very different personalities that aren't meshing. It's not that they fight. It's not that they dislike each other. They just sort of co-exist. They hover at the parrell stage despite the fact that the 3/4 year olds are moving more to the play-together stage.

And to me, that's ok. So we don't have playdates. What's happened instead, is that we just don't talk. We don't exchange emails. We don't act like friends because our children aren't.

I've tried. I'm just tired of being a one person relationship. I've called her once a month. When I do, it's like old times. We talk. We share stories. We laugh. Then we hang up and until I pick up the phone the next month we're in our own seperate worlds. I send emails. Sometimes she writes back. Sometimes she doesn't. If I don't email her there's no hope of getting one. The last time we talked I pitched the idea of meeting up at a park. It was met with an affirmative word or two. She promised to call the next week with a time and day that would work. She never did.

Her middle son's birthday was last week. The last three birthdays it's been her family and us gathering to celebrate with him. This year it's come and gone and we've not even heard a peep. I expected it - yet it still makes me sad. This is really it. I had been consoling myself with the idea that she was just busy with all the things her oldest was getting involved in as "big" elementary school kid now. I had come to think that perhaps it was the change in her husband's work schedule. But none of that is it.

My son's birthday is 4 months off, yet he's already making plans for a party. He lists off the friends he wants to invite - the first in the group are N's three. It breaks my heart. What bothers me most is not that I'm losing a friend but that he's losing what he thinks is a friend.