Will you be my friend?

My new friend is tall and dark and elegantly wiry: If I were to cast her in an old movie, she’d be Gene Tierney or Ava Gardner. First thing in the morning, she drinks tea instead of coffee. She has raised four children, but still has the restless energy of a teenager. She likes making things with her hands, and is good with gadgets like a man. As far as I can tell, she is almost always in a good mood. When she laughs, which is often, it’s so hard she cries.

In short, we could not be more different. But the most amazing thing has happened. After years of circling each other as passing acquaintances with kids in the same schools, exchanging pleasantries at parent/teacher nights and children’s birthday parties, we now speak to each other almost every day. Or we email funny stories and pictures back and forth of our kids, our work, the trials and tribulations of midlife marriages and home renovations.

Friday mornings, we meet at yoga, and afterwards we go out for coffee. She has hooked me on Swedish clogs (we now have identical pairs, in different sizes — hers are bigger) and chocolate-ginger cookies. After she once dropped off a tower of coffee-table books for me to flip through when I was sick, we developed a routine of exchanging favourite art books and DVDs. When we find a free afternoon, we meet for lunch and go gallery hopping.

And this past February, after she sold her house and decided to skip a couple of months of snow by splurging on a rental villa on her own on the island of St. Martin (having grown up in the southern hemisphere, she can’t do winter), I was as delighted as a 16-year-old with a new BFF when she asked me to come down and stay for a whole week.

Oops, now where was I? Sorry — that was just her on the phone. (In an hour, she’s running over to show me some pictures she took this morning while walking the dog that might just be inspiration for a new series  — she is also a brilliant photographer). And when I think back on it, actually, that’s how we finally really connected: over a show of her photographs I happened to catch one afternoon at a neighbourhood café.

I know it sounds ridiculous that I am so enthralled. It shouldn’t really be so remarkable to find a new best friend. By the time we reach our late forties, our lives should be richly layered with all sorts of people. People we have worked with, fitness buddies, friends met through other friends, neighbourhood acquaintances. But in my own experience — as with, I suspect, many others of my time-stressed, dual-income generation — the opposite is more often true: The tight circle of our closest friends grows ever smaller over the years. We lose some to distance, some to misunderstandings and more to divorce. The first thing we cut back on in our busy schedules is keeping up with the few friends we have. And preoccupied as we are with work and family obligations, the dwindling ranks of our nearest and dearest are not so easily replaced.

Finally ready

Before my new friend, I cannot remember the last time I made another really close one. And yet, now that my children are almost grown, and I can see the long, potentially lonely light at the end of the tunnel of parenting ahead of me, I find myself cherishing the few really great friends I have managed to keep over the years, and look forward to our get-togethers with perhaps more need to connect than ever before.

In some ways, I think my new friend came into my life when she did because I finally was ready for her. For years, I had thought her charming whenever we’d bumped into each other and yet never pursued a relationship — she always seemed sort of grown-up or too together for me. Her girls were always beautifully dressed, with perfect pigtails in ribbons (seriously — at public school), while I felt accomplished if I managed to actually brush Sophie’s hair before we ran out the door in the morning — late as usual. At cocktail parties, I would see her slim, dark silhouette across the room, and she and her husband, who seemed to know everyone, appeared effortlessly confident and well connected. I guess that I imagined she would never need another friend (and if she did, it would certainly never be me).

But one wonderful lesson it appears we can learn only as we grow older is nobody is quite as they seem. Ironically, it took her insightful photographs to convince me to take a closer look. But once I did, I began to appreciate that beneath her perfectly poised exterior was a woman facing the same life challenges: the changing dynamic of grown children leaving home and its effects not only on your relationship with your significant other, but on how you see yourself. Admirably, she was meeting those challenges head-on, redefining herself as an artist and taking her family through it with her. Not only could she use a friend, she needed someone who could meet her halfway between the woman she once was and the woman she wanted to be.

The trip to St. Martin proved to be a revelation. Not knowing her all that well before agreeing to join her for the week, I admit to having been a little apprehensive. But when I arrived — not only did she greet me at the airport with a cocktail chilling in a black top hat full of ice — here was this woman, whom I had thought might somehow be too straight for me, who was clearly up for anything. The house she was staying in was on a dark, windswept hilltop in the middle of nowhere. Yet she was living there entirely on her own, braving the crazy winding roads at night, and would fearlessly approach anyone, from a snotty French waiter to a toothless farmer hawking vegetables, with a big, warm smile. Every morning, no matter what we’d been up to the night before, she woke full of energetic plans for the day ahead. Only a couple of years ahead of me on the road of life, my new friend was proving to be not only great company but a bit of a guide. I resolved then and there that, just like her, whatever I might want to do, it was never going to be too late for me, either.

This too is what the intense spark of new friendship has taught me: I might not be a teenager anymore, but I am hardly past the best-before date for adventure. Thanks to my new friend, I am wearing cherry-red Swedish clogs and learning about fine art photography — and still going on road trips to places I’ve never been with the stereo loud and the windows cranked wide open. Sure, my fifth decade might be fast approaching, but I can still fall in love with someone new.

This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of More