Chernobyl

This morning, my daughter told me that she has realized that our entire nuclear family "has no friends". She said, "we're like Chernobyl -- everyone turns their back on us."

Now, I don't see this as true, because I DO have friends, and so does my husband, and so does my daughter! But her narrow definition of "friend" right now is pretty clear: a Friend is someone you hang out with, go shopping or to the movies with, etc. OK, so that's not something I do all that much.

I do miss having a lot of good friends, I will admit it. Even though I can sit here and think of several people I'd consider to be friends -- not a one of them is what you might call an Inner Circle friend -- someone you'd call in a crisis.

So, here I am at the library on a Friday afternoon, taking a little much-needed downtime. A Personal Day, aka a mental health day. Although, I've spent half the day working on a project for work, at least I've been at the library, and feeling like my time is my own.

I went to look up "how to make friends" and see what books might appear. The library search brought up 561 titles. Of those, about 555 were for "tots or teens". It seems that children are the only ones who need to make friends!

Isn't that strange? Because when I was a kid, it seemed so EASY to make a new friend -- you never thought twice about it, because you always had to make friends with new kids at school, and classes would change every September... so you always had a chance and an excuse to get to know kids. Birthday parties, school events, sports teams... all that stuff made it easy to make friends.

But now?

What happens when you're a full-on adult and you want to connect with people who might share the same interests as you?

It ain't easy.

As adults, we're trained to be guarded, to keep to ourselves, to be reserved. At my job, it's an unwritten rule -- but I know it's frowned upon to "make friends" with work-related contacts. Cannot be friends with subordinates or superiors; peers are all working too hard to have the time... vendors? Not appropriate. Contacts at other similar companies? Cannot share with them. So, who do you end up talking to?

I have not entertained at our home since we moved to Colorado. (OK, we've had the daughter and her boyfriend over, and there have been a couple of teen sleepovers -- but zero dinner parties, zero BBQ's). In my new home, I have a lovely living room that has seen only a single visitor, for two hours. The thought of inviting people over to ... SEE... HOW... WE... LIVE freaks out my husband. And we're not freaks living in a trash heap! The house is tidy, orderly, neat, and well-decorated (if I do say so myself). I take pride in how I arrange the artwork, the furnishings; I change up the decor frequently so it's fresh, liberal use of grace notes such as fresh flowers and plants, candles... the house is NICE. But, the furniture all comes to us second-hand, and as my daughters always lament, "nothing matches." So what? Who CARES about being all Ethan Allen-matchy-matchy. I HATE that Drexel Heritage-Furniture-Row-I'm-a-suburban-clone look.

But, the house itself is NO reason to prevent people from coming to our house.

So what is it?

Fear.

What are we afraid of?

People! Isn't that silly?

I know Marty always feels that people will see the older carpeting, and "Judge Us". We've got 200 lbs of dogflesh on the hoof and a bevvy of cats -- yes, the stupidest thing to have is light beige carpeting, and that's what we have. But... it's just... STUFF.

I don't care about that. My problem is that I've just lost the knack of... inviting people over.

I have forgotten how to entertain.

While at the library today, I picked up a book on "Guest Rooms" -- how to entertain overnight guests. I have had no overnight guests since arriving in Colorado -- though my daughter has. And they've all, to a person, been AWFUL lazy, self-centered guests -- left trails of Messes, dirty dishes and broken stuff behind them.

When I was a kid, we used to go stay with my mom's friends very often -- and they'd come to visit us. And it was ALWAYS fun. I knew to make the bed, do the dishes, keep things tidy, say please and thank you... grace notes.

I'm lonely and I am rusty at friendship.


Can I be the ONLY woman in Denver who feels this way???