Snatched moments
A few minutes of company
Pleasure in easy companionship
Mundane chatter about nothing
Twenty minutes of a return to before
Being friends is no longer an everyday pastime
Long lunches distant memories
Yoga classes no more
Because
Children change everything
And, most days, it’s a fair exchange
I managed a short lunchtime walk with a dear friend this week. They’re few and far between these days. Once upon a time, lunch hours were, well, lunch hours. An hour spent at a yoga class with colleagues who became friends, or eating and then walking laps of the leafy business park. These days I don’t take a lunch hour, so that I can finish at a sensible time and actually see my children in the evening.
That means friendships are sporadic, catching fleeting moments and trying to cram weeks or months worth of catching up into encounters measured in minutes rather than hours. I don’t even remember the last time we managed a girls night out. Lunch once a month with whoever can make it is almost manageable.
But the sheer ridiculous joy of this ridiculous pair of numpties is worth it (almost all of the time).
How do you manage to maintain your friendships between work and kids and everything else?
Smelly Socks and Garden Peas 
Beautifully written and expressed. As my own friendships have changed and evolved into adulthood, I can only imagine how children can further shift things. Thank you for sharing!
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I don’t have children but I can imagine how hard it is to keep up with friendships as children do take up a lot of parents’ time! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
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I am single, I don’t have kids but my close friends work in different cities. I don’t know what is it about the autumn and rainy season but I miss them a lot. We only manage to catch up for lunch twice in a year.
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Ahh that must be so hard. My friends live locally and I still feel like I hardly see them. I hope you get to meet up again soon.
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It is very hard to manage friendships while raising kids. My college best friends and I have a Zoom happy hour every Thursday after the kids are in bed. We started this in 2020 and have kept it up. Most weeks all of us are on, but not always. It has been a great way to reconnect and maintain our friendships.
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I can see how having children does change your relationships with friends, etc (your poem is good at conveying that). I don’t have children but I do maintain friendships long-distance (which has it’s own challenges) so I can empathize with the sentiment that things are not how they once were. Fab post!
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Oh the far away friends are different too. I miss them too, but those we stayed in touch with are wonderful and when we pick up, it’s like nothing changed.
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I feel this in my soul. I feel like I’m probably a bad friend generally right now… but I also feel like deep genuine friendships transcend what is hopefully a stage in life.
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Absolutely, true friendships don’t care if you haven’t seen each other in years. And a “good” friend doesn’t care if you’re a “bad” one because of other commitments.
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Thanks for sharing, I have found it harder over the pandemic to connect with friends as I have done more on my own as they are not keen to meet, hopefully, they will start change soon đŸ™‚
Nic | Nic’s Adventures
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Hopefully things are getting a bit more back to the before times xx
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Ahh! I used to feel like I had no time to fit everything in but now that my girls are older I seem to have got back some of time to myself and now I actually miss being rushed off my feet with the kids. lol Friends will still be there when the kids are older x
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I think I’m on the cusp of having a bit more time. Few more years and they’ll be OK at home on their own for a bit.
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I’m terrible at staying in touch with my friends. Luckily, I work with a couple of them!
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And you have virtual ones too xx
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Thank you. đŸ˜˜
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It is difficult to carve out time for friendships when kids are young. The good news is, they grow up, and then you’ll have more time for you! I look back now and realize how quickly the time goes, so I have no regrets for putting them first when they were young.
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