Can you get over the hump in a friendship slump?

The kids in the back seat are staging a conversational attack on public school when she piped up, in a soft voice, "I might actually make a friend." She paused, "I used to want lots of friends, but now I think I'd be happy even with just one." My heart fluttered, thudded, then sank. I remember that feeling. I had it so strong when I was a kid. Just one friend who really wanted you around. Just one whose mother hadn't forced them into playing with you.

You could hear it in the tone of your mother's voice as she answered the brand new cordless phone out on the stone stoop when evening was already starting to cool, sinking kind of, and then the sound of her lowering herself with a little thud onto the stair, holding the broom absolutely still and balanced next to her. You couldn't hear the words. I'll never know exactly what was said during this exchange, but I know the few neighborhood friends I had were reluctant ones.

What is it that I experienced, and now my children are experiencing? Is it the trifecta of friendship doom: living in the country, being homeschooled, and afraid of making friends at church?

This one, beautiful dear one, she holds her heart so openly. She has "friends for the day" - at gymnastics camp, swimming lessons, gym, the park on a sunny afternoon - that seem to partially fill her friendship tank. But she, perhaps the most, longs for true friendship where you see someone all the time and you can call them on the phone and it's not wierd at all.

The false starts at making friends feels like an almost visceral cycle - the leap, the balancing and almost falling, the inevitable dismount that jams your knees and makes you even less likely to climb up and try again. Does this get better in public school, I wonder? I always thought that was the key, when I was dealing with this myself as a tween. But I don't know, because I never went.

What has your experience been? Do you homeschool or public school (or were you home or public schooled) and what kind of friendship difficulties or successes do you remember as child? What made things work? What made things not work?

Questions

I stare up at the clouds that fly silver, cobalt, purple, magenta, like wings off the setting sun already tucked behind the hills. Venus is there, sparkling in her white dress, straight out to the west. Yesterday, she was northwest. The day before, southwest. I wonder at this, realizing how little I know of the earth's spin and the skies spin around her. Why don't the stars march slowly up and down the horizon like the sun in her seasons? Why does the moon set at a different time every night? So little I know, just a tiny bit of trivia about this grand earth and life. So much I want to learn with my children. When I am old, I want to understand these mystical stars.

I remember younger years when all the things I hadn't experienced yet weighed heavy, and I desperately wanted to live so I could do these things. Marriage. Babies. A home. A career. A spiritual life. I am not old yet, but I have felt the kiss of the sun in the springtime and learned how Jesus sings in the breeze; I have painted the hills with wildflower seeds scattered and seen a hummingbird perch on the long grass. I have heard the laughter lilting from my children's mouths, and I've felt my husband's eyelids crinkle beneath my cheek as he smiles. I know now that birthing a baby is the hardest work and the greatest joy, that pain in the soul is harsher than pain in the body. I've lost friends, lovers, grandparents, loved ones. I've lost the mirage that life goes on forever. But in the beautiful in-between, I've found a life I never imagined in the hush of the everyday. I've danced to music no one else can hear, I've sung songs I never wrote down, I prayed prayers without words, I've broken and I've been rebuilt, and this beautiful mosaic that is almost-33 is more than I ever asked for.

And still so many questions, and a myriad of hidden joys to be discovered. How many years would be enough? My soul whispers of the immortal Garden, walking with God through the verdant pathways. Only eternity is enough. I sigh, and look up at Venus again, high above the sooty hills, and I think about her singing with the constellations a tune only God himself can hear. And so my soul groans, happy and full this time, a song without words to a Creator without end.

Linked to Lisa Jo at the Gypsy Mama