Edit 37: On Adult Friendships: Seasons and Serendipity
An ongoing series on adult relationships
Do you know what my favorite word is? Serendipity. A happy accident—something that arrives without warning and leaves you wondering how you ever managed without it.
Last week, a letter came in the mail. Familiar loops and swirls covered the front of the envelope from a friend I've known for over twenty years. I stood at the door reading the return address and smiled before I'd even opened it. I made tea, curled up in the sunroom in the soft light of a hazy early evening, and settled in.
It was clever and warm and entirely, unmistakably her—and somewhere between the first paragraph and the last, I felt something I can only describe as serendipity. Not because the letter was unexpected, though it was. But because it arrived at exactly the right moment to remind me of something I already knew and needed to hear again.
Some friendships are meant for a season. And then there are the ones that aren't—the ones that follow you across cities and chapters and years, and somehow always find their way back to your door.
In the spirit of honesty I've been surprised by some of them—but I’m sure the same could be said about me.
When you move as much as our family has, you learn quickly that not every friendship travels. Some are rooted in proximity: beautiful while you're there, but not quite built for the distance. You say your goodbyes, you mean every word, and then life fills in the space. There’s no fault, no failure, it’s simply the natural order of things.
And then there are the others.
The ones who texted when you landed in the new city. Who remembered the things you were nervous about and asked how they went. Who sent something in the mail for no reason other than they saw it and thought of you. Who picked up the phone—or sent a voice note or meme at an unreasonable hour—as though no time had passed at all.
Those are the ones who stayed.
What moves me most about these friendships is that they didn't survive on obligation. Nobody was keeping score or honoring a social contract. They lasted because something in them was simply genuine—and genuine things have a way of enduring what convenience cannot.
Some of these friendships have consistent contact. A thread that never really goes quiet, a rhythm that became its own kind of language over the years. And then there are the ones that are less frequent—months can pass, sometimes longer—and yet when you find your way back to each other, the warmth is immediate. and unchanged. It’s like returning to a place that always felt like home. As I wrote not long ago, that's the difference between nearness and closeness: and the ones who stayed have taught me that the two were never the same thing to begin with.
Both kinds matter and both kinds count.
I've stopped measuring the health of a friendship by how often we talk and started measuring it by how it feels when we do. Whether there's ease there. Whether I leave the conversation feeling fuller than when I arrived. Whether I am seen—not just known, but genuinely seen—by the person across from me.
The ones who stayed have taught me that.
They've also taught me something about myself—about the kind of friend I want to be and the kind of friendships worth protecting. Because the ones who stayed didn't do so by accident. They made small, consistent choices over time. To reach out. To remember. To show up in whatever way the distance allowed.
And so did I.
That's what I want to carry forward. Not the grief of the friendships that didn't last, but the gratitude for the ones that did. The quiet amazement of realizing that someone who knew you in one chapter of your life still wants to know you in this one.
After all the moves, all the goodbyes, all the seasons that came and went, they’re still here.
And I don't take a single one of them for granted.
