Christmas Time Quiet

The funny thing about my house is that is always really quiet around Christmas time. David is gone at work and we have already opened our gifts so there is not much going on. So I have time on my hands. With this time I think about what has happened this past year; I plan for next year; I start backing up all my photos onto DVDs; and I do a form of winter cleaning ( I already have 3 boxes ready for goodwill). I guess the strangest thing I thought about this year was friends. How do you define a friend? Is it by how much you do together? Have you shared a meal? How much you know about them? Did you send a Christmas card to them? Are you in their contact list on their cell phone? Is there a multi-teared friend classification chart we are suppose to be following?

With our busy, crazy lives - how do you be a friend? How do you support and help? I have something like 250 "friends" on facebook, admittedly about 20 are family so they don't count. So of the 230 left how many would consider me a friend? If you were friends 22 years ago but you haven't talked since then except on facebook are you still friends? Would they accept my help if I offered it? Would I accept theirs if it were offered? When you call to talk do they think you are just being nosey? One of my friends that I had known since 7th grade died this year and we had been emailing back and forth through facebook. Why didn't she reach out to me when she was desparate?

The kids definition of friend is varied. Coco can walk into a room of strangers and announces "Look at all my new friends!" Others walk into a room of people and say "They all hate me." In one instance, a child of mine introduced me to his "friend" - When I asked him later how he knew the friend, he said "Oh we have played football against each other for the last couple years." Sometimes I feel like I am in the middle of that, they don't like me or hate me, they basically just acknowledge I exist, like a commercial on prime time tv.

I know in my lifetime I have have many people come and go. Some I hear from, some I don't. Those I don't hear from I wonder if we were ever really friends or if we just co-existed in some brief period of life - or if I made them mad and didn't know it (I know your shocked). I think of them and miss them. Then there are those who tell me all about what a great friendship we had or what a wonderful memory I helped create and I have no idea what they are talking about (must be the age or the grey hair).

I guess what it boils down is not what you can get from a friendship but what you can give.