MWF Seeking BFF (40 page)

FRIEND-DATE 47.
I’ve been trying to meet up with Bridget for two months now. We met in September, on the flight back from Callie’s wedding. She was sitting next to me. I spent the first hour—while we were sitting on the tarmac, not moving and getting increasingly frustrated—trying to figure out how I knew her. She looked so familiar. For a while I thought she might be Stephanie LaGrossa, the three-time
Survivor
contestant. The voice in my head kept saying, “Talk to her. This is your in. You’ve been wanting to pick someone up on a plane.” But she seemed really engrossed in her book, and there’s nothing
more off-putting than being interrupted while reading. Instead I kept checking her out, racking my brain for what our connection might be.

When she put the book away and stared into the distance with the glazed expression of a disgruntled airline passenger, I struck up conversation.

“Do you live in Chicago?” I asked.

Her eyes focused in on me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that you look so familiar.”

“Really? I was thinking the same thing about you.”

We figured out we both went to Northwestern, but were different years, different majors, and in different sororities. When we exchanged names, nothing rang a bell for either of us. We’ve never worked together. The only thing we can think of is that we used to see each other around campus, as we have some common friends.

By the time we finally took off, Bridget and I were old pals, gabbing about Northwestern weddings (she married her college sweetheart, too), and European travel (she was leaving for a birthday trip to Paris in a few days). Eventually she went back to her book and I to mine. When we landed, I didn’t know how to ask for her number or email address without sounding presumptuous, so instead I took out my business card. I sat there holding that 3.5-by-2-inch piece of cardstock for fifteen minutes, waiting for the exact right moment to give it to her. (Insert another internal pep talk here. Like I said, picking up friends is getting easier, not easy.)

I don’t know if it was the perfect time, or just the last chance, but as we were gathering our bags I handed Bridget my card and said, “Here’s my info, I’d love to get together sometime.”

“For sure! Let’s make a date after I get back from Paris.”

There was no time for her to give me a card or phone number, so I could only cross my fingers and hope.

This would be a better story if Bridget had in fact emailed me for that date. She didn’t. One lesson that’s been continually hammered into me this year? If I want a friendship to happen, especially in the early stages, I have to do the work. I can’t count on others to reach out to me. Maybe they will—certainly a number of people have—but I can’t rely on it. I’ve learned, though, that if I carry the load, people will come along for the ride.

In October I found Bridget on Facebook and sent her a message asking about her trip and inviting her for a drink. She got back to me two weeks later. I wrote her back immediately, she took another two weeks to respond. If this were a romantic pursuit I’d tell myself to get a life, but this is friending, and I’m on a mission. I don’t think Bridget is giving me the brush off, anyway. I think she’s just busy.

We meet for coffee at 8:30 on the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving. Bridget—quite the world traveler—is leaving tomorrow for a Hawaiian holiday. I really like her. She’s talkative, intelligent, and generally pleasant. We catch up as if we’ve known each other forever, but I can already tell that she’s someone who means well but isn’t great with follow-up. She’s one of those would-be companions who, every time you see them, say “We should really get together more often!” or “Can we please keep in better touch this time around? Seriously?” And even while the words are coming out of her mouth, you can tell it’s an empty promise. Not a lie exactly, because I think she really means it in the moment, but an intention that will fall through the cracks in favor of already-established friends and work responsibilities and a husband.

I don’t hold it against her. Bridget never asked for a new
friend. She was just sitting on an airplane minding her own business when I picked her up. Perhaps she’s already at her one-hundred-fifty-friend capacity.

In case I’m wrong, I send Bridget an email two weeks later wishing her a happy holiday season and inquiring about her trip to Hawaii. She doesn’t write back.

This Thanksgiving, Matt and I are celebrating at my brother-in-law’s in New York, twenty minutes from where I grew up. Because we usually visit my family at Christmastime—my dad and all three of his siblings converted from Protestant to become two Jews, a Catholic, and a Buddhist nun (we’re way modern) but we still gather and sing “Jingle Bells” every December—Matt’s side always gets Turkey Day. Usually we go to his mother’s house in Cape Cod, but the plans have changed this year.

A bonus to this holiday relocation is that I get to visit my dad’s grave. He’s buried in a cemetery less than five minutes from my childhood home, but now that Alex and my mom both live in Chicago I don’t get out there much.

I’m not sure exactly why—I think it’s a combination of not wanting to take Matt away from his mom during the holiday, my own need for time away from the in-laws, and, mostly, my desire to stay at the cemetery longer than usual—but I decide to visit the gravesite alone for the first time ever. In the past I’ve always been with my mother or Matt. We stand at the top of the hill, underneath the birch tree (a fitting tribute), and admire the headstone for five minutes or so. Per Jewish custom, we place small stones on top of the grave. Per Bertsche custom, we take a picture of it with our camera phones and send the photo to the others with notes like “Looking good”
or “Dad says hi.” It’s our strange, twenty-first-century way of feeling close to him. We virtually visit so that we can be there more than the two times a year we make it out to Westchester.

Holidays are usually the hardest for me and seeing other dads in action—our Thanksgiving dinner was filled with great ones—always hurts the most, so I want some alone time to process the pain. I wish I didn’t get jealous, that I didn’t immediately think of all that I’ve lost when I see happy families. Maybe one day, when Matt is the great dad wowing me at my own family table, I won’t. But today I’m feeling a giant void and I want to try and close it up, or at least start filling it, if only for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll use the opportunity to talk to my dad. Or, more likely, I’ll just sit on the ground next to the stone. I feel closer to him on that patch of grass than I do anywhere on earth, and today I want some father-daughter time.

As I pull into the gates, a man standing at the entrance looks annoyed. “We close in five minutes,” he barks.

“Seriously?”

“Four
P.M.
every day,” he says. I want to scream that I don’t live here, how am I supposed to know the cemetery hours? But instead I nod and book it up the hill.

I place a stone, take a photo, and sit on the ground. I cry. And then, four minutes later, I leave.

On the drive home I want to call Callie or Sara. Or maybe Brooke, my New York City roommate who lived with me when my dad died and in the grief-filled aftermath. I want to talk to someone who knew my father, who can picture the man who helped raise me as I rage about the cemetery’s closing time.

I need an old friend.

I don’t pick up the phone at all because I’m already crying and I only sort of know the way home and I’m driving
my mother-in-law’s car. I hardly need the added (and illegal) distraction of a cellphone. Instead I think about my lifelong friends, the people who knew me long before I could find my way around a cemetery, and my new ones. I’ve been searching for a BFF like I had in my childhood, another Callie or Sara who will understand me implicitly. But I’m not sure that’s possible anymore. No one I met this year will have known me before my father died or before I met Matt. Who I was then is so important to who I am now that it’s hard to imagine anyone can ever know me as completely as my lifers do.

In
The Girls from Ames
, Jeffrey Zaslow’s book about the lifelong friendship of eleven women, one of the “girls” explains her relationship with the others: “We root each other to the core of who we are, rather than what defines us as adults—by careers or spouses or kids. There’s a young girl in each of us who is still full of life. When we’re together, I try to remember that.”

No matter how hard I try, I can never recapture my 16-year-old self with someone who wasn’t around to meet her.

When I get home I send an email to a journalist friend who’s been following my quest from afar. I tell her I’m worried that I’ll never find what I’m looking for.

That afternoon she writes me back and explains that in the wake of her ten-year high school reunion she too has been reflecting on friendship.

“Sometimes when I see people from high school I feel trapped in the persona I maintained then,” she says. “Ten years have gone by, and I’ve changed a tremendous amount—both emotionally and in circumstance. So while my oldest relationships are incredibly dear, and it’s true that they know me so intimately, it can be freeing to have relationships built on exactly who you are at this moment. As you ease into these new friendships, you start working backward and putting the pieces
together from the former lives you both had. If it’s a good match, you’ll find that it wasn’t actually necessary for you to have shared all those experiences. Some of the friendships I’ve found as an adult are far more rewarding than those forged out of the convenience of adolescence.”

She’s seriously wise.

I think back to my own high school reunion, specifically to the insecurities and jealousies that bubbled up as if I’d traveled back in time, and realize my friend is right. There’s a place for both kinds of friendships. I’m only 28. There are years—decades!—still ahead, and one day in the not-too-far future my new friends will be new old friends. They’ll be the ones who knew me before I had kids. Before my kids had kids.

They’ll be lifers.

It’s crunch time. There are only five weeks left of the year and the same number of dates. I’ve had a surprisingly easy time finding potential BFFs thus far—between setups and mixers and my essay, I’ve been able to schedule some weeks ahead—but now, just as I’m nearing the end, I’ve tapped out all my resources. The next two get-togethers are on the calendar (Celia the boutique manager and Joanna, an ex–Tripp Lake Camper who recently moved to town) but then I’m at a loss. Part of me feels like, enough already. Once I have forty-nine dates to show for this search, do I really need to scrape up three more just to make the number prettier? But I’m not one to give up, and what if girl-date 52 is The One? It could happen.

The holiday season, for all its good tidings and comfort and joy, is sucky for friend-making. Schedules don’t allow for girl-dates. They’re too packed full of holiday parties and vacations and family time and old friends. Potential friends are not top priority.

Like everything in this world, friending has seasons. This particular calendar mirrors the academic year. In September,
people want to start fresh and welcome new pals into their lives. You can friend like crazy for about three months. Then, the holidays. Potential BFFs retreat to the comfort of old friends and family and too much eggnog. Come January, attitudes turn around in the wake of our second fresh start. As winter turns to spring it only gets better—warm weather! walks along the lake!—until summer hits. Suddenly weddings and vacations take precedence over fledgling connections. And then the cycle starts anew.

Unfortunately, my project ends smack in the middle of the holiday rut. My would-be pals have no extra time for themselves, much less for me. The phrase “let’s get together after the new year” gets thrown around a lot. That, however, doesn’t work with my plan.

I ask everyone I know for advice. “Where should I try to meet someone? I’ve exhausted my options.”

“How about a religious event?”

“Already did it.”

“A meetup group?”

“Same.”

“Have you tried getting fixed up, or—oh, I know!—how about an airplane?”

“Done and done.”

“Something will come up,” my mom tells me over the phone. I’m on my way to pick up the final ingredients for tonight’s chicken curry dinner. “You’re the best friender there is.”

Awww, Mom.

It’s November, it’s cold, and while the walk to the grocery store is short, it’s still outdoors. I’d been cooking in my comfy around-the-house clothes when I realized I was
short an onion and some green curry, so I threw on my pink-and-orange-striped pom-pom hat, an old winter coat, and my slippers. I’m wearing an extra-large white V-neck T-shirt that says “Team Bill”—it’s the family uniform when we do the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night walk in honor of my dad—and gray sweatpants. Not cute, fitted Lululemon ones that make my butt look great. Ratty, stained, old sweats that I probably should have thrown out years ago. I look homeless.

Next to the cheese section, I do a double take.