I am a careless correspondent and only intermittently reliable when it comes to the standard tasks required to maintain friendships; this is most clearly evident when someone has an infant.
In the year and a half since Amy Joy and Dishwasher Pete had a son I’ve been to visit them in Amsterdam exactly once. When I feel haunted by this fact I remind myself that I have visited friends with babies here in Cambridge about the same number of times – and they are just a five minute bike ride away.
I know from experience that it is hard to find community when you are the parent of a small child – hence the ten year commitment to my day job running a parenting magazine – but the fact that I know this does not make it any easier to arrange visits. Even if I had small children about the place this would likely be true (and in fact, might prevent any visits at all – my infants always provided awkward challenges in these situations). Families are notoriously difficult to schedule.
Given too many constraints I often just stop thinking about the subject. But Amy Joy is very organized and she finally managed to pin me down on a date for a visit. This weekend it was a tremendous delight to welcome their small family and show them around Cambridge. We went for walks, and lingered on playgrounds, and went punting, with our boys laughing and splashing. We talked about the past and our expat present.
During the rush to pack before going away I neglected to write about a similar meeting with another Portland friend – Lli – in London. We first met via the magazine when our babies were not yet crawling; she was the only person who braved a winter storm to attend my birthday party that year. Our children are both extremely tall and blonde, and this was true even in their toddler years. Lli and I were friends through many major upheavals in our social and work lives, including her move to Pittsburgh and mine to Seattle. The fact that we can meet and go to a carnival in a far distant city, after nine years of camaraderie during which we see each other only rarely, is extraordinary.
The fact that there is continuity between my old life and this one is quite surprising.