But it's the knowing and being known that is also making me homesick for the first time since making that cross-country trek in our Penske truck nearly two years ago. In some ways, making new friends is easy when you have children. But it's really just the meeting people part that is easy. You see other parents at soccer practice, in the carpool line, you make a playdate for your children, and therefore, yourselves. But I've found that the actual process of getting to KNOW people has become more difficult in this season of our lives. Gone are the days when we could plop down on a friend's couch and linger for hours just eating and talking. Telling stories, listening to stories, learning the tapestry of someone's life and finding how we can become part of the thread that is woven through that tapestry, savoring the way that this new thread is being woven into our own. I find that friendships are best forged in hours around the table, in late nights that turn into later nights because we just can't tear ourselves away.
And then there are the children. They are wonderful and beautiful and oh so loved, and it's hard to complete a blessed sentence when they are around - much less an entire story. Mealtime with friends feels more harried and functional - counting out the number of bites that must be consumed before the children can be excused, and then hopping up from the table every few minutes once they have been excused to see what loud drama is unfolding in the other room as they play, to ensure that the crying of the visiting child hasn't been incited by some injustice on the part of my own child. The time that I long to linger on at the table and pour another glass of wine for my guests is the time that the children are pushing the limits of their energy and need to be tucked into bed, so we stretch it out just twenty more minutes in an effort to be with our guests - to get to know and to be known - and then the children have reached meltdown point and we still have the bedtime routine looming ahead of us after we wave our goodbyes. I often replay the conversations of the evening once the children are sleeping and the kitchen is cleaned (or not), and so many times I realize I answered a question but, in my distracted state, didn't reciprocate the question. Or it occurs to me that there were things I wanted to know about my friends - life events I wanted to check in on, deeper questions I wanted to ask, but I was called away from the table at that moment to get another glass of milk or assist a child in the restroom. I'm not a believer in multi-tasking. I can't do it well, and I don't think our brains were made to do it. If I'm talking with someone, I want to sit down and TALK WITH THEM. I want to look in their eyes and see their expressions, not just to listen but to hear, not just to talk but to actually say something. Without distractions, I want to communicate to them their importance to me. And then there are the children. I realize this is a season of life, and it's a season I'm enjoying for so many reasons. I absolutely adore being the mother of young children. And yet, I find that it's a difficult season in which to forge new friendships.
And so I am homesick. I'm homesick for the friends who already know me, the ones whose thread is already so beautifully woven into the tapestry of my life, whose presence has made it richer. I'm homesick for the friends who already know my stories, so that when I have to get up from the table for the umpteenth time to help a precious child, there is still no gap in the knowing. Things are already understood. We are all already at home, no matter whose house we are in. I'm homesick for the familiar and the traditions. I'm homesick for my bookclub girls and our post-kid-bedtime conversations. I'm homesick for the birthday celebrations. I'm homesick for the standing date for the Oscar's party and the peanut M&Ms I inhale while we compete to guess the results. I'm homesick for the soul-filling singing of my old church. For parents and brothers who lived close enough to come for Sunday lunch. I'm homesick for the life group friends we used to see each Sunday evening. For the friends who share our history, who know our stories, who have walked beside us as life has unfolded. The ones we logged hours with before the sweet interruptions of children, whose couches we helped to make a little saggier, whose sleep we stole without apology as we stayed just one more hour, and then just a few minutes more.
I trust that in time, we will forge these same friendships in any place we call home. We will find a way to log the hours and tell the stories and welcome new threads into our tapestries. But for now, I will savor this ache inside, because it means that I have loved and been loved, have known and been known. I love so many things about where we are now, but were I the owner of red glittery shoes, today you would find me clicking my heels.
