It’s the end of the year again and we all have our funny ways! Nations are no different. Back where I come from, we all send each other sentimental greetings at Christmas or New Year, with bits of updated news about our children, our grandchildren and this year’s holidays. At the end of the year many of us party, linking hands at midnight and singing (drunkenly) a rather peculiar centuries-old song, remembering and honouring old friendships in old-fashioned words nobody really understands. It’s a tradition.
This year, writing the annual Christmas cards got me thinking. Each year the list is subtly changed. A few names are added; a few are crossed off. Life has become very mobile and new acquaintances are many. The list becomes too long and unwieldy and difficult choices must be made. My parents’ Christmas card list seemed to stay the same until the day they died and I still send cards to one or two of those old family friends who seemed to have become almost as close as blood relations. We have a few of those on our list too, friends who were at our wedding or whose children were early friends with ours. But the rest are fluctuating. Some years I feel ruthless. Names are crossed off, because they never get in touch. More names go because we fell out: their children behaved badly in our home; we disagreed about politics or religion; they never even rang us after we moved away but dropped us because we no longer lived round the corner…
This year I am looking at things from a different perspective. I must be getting old! Life is too short, it seems, for those kinds of disagreements to matter. I am busy putting names back on the list. Surely, in view of our common humanity, there are more things to agree on than to dispute? Friends are precious. I am slowly learning that and would like, if it were possible, to retrieve the addresses of former friends, probably long moved on, who we have lost, through differing opinions or just neglect although, realistically, I can’t send cards to them all! Looking back, we’ve had some fun. Some of those friendships were very special, some of those families had children who watched the same firework displays with ours on Bonfire Night and shared the same tricycles in the back garden at weekends; with some of them we spent long nights, with a glass of wine in hand, discussing the nature of God and the universe and putting the world to rights. Of course we fell out – it happens all the time! But they were friends.
Nowadays we live in a temporary community. We are expats. Life is ‘temporary’; we live amongst people who are on temporary contracts, living in temporary houses and, worst of all, sharing temporary friendships. At least, that’s how life could be if we let it. I’m not keen to leave it that way! I have another growing list of friends – we email, we send photos, we forward jokes and thought-provoking anecdotes and one day, hopefully, will meet up again, in England, Turkey or Australia or who knows where? ‘Lest old acquaintance be forgot’, I must look forward to another new year of emails and phone calls, photos and maybe visits one day and I must remember to value those close-at-hand family and friends whilst I have them, ‘for the sake of auld lang syne’.
A very happy blogging New Year to you all!
This year, writing the annual Christmas cards got me thinking. Each year the list is subtly changed. A few names are added; a few are crossed off. Life has become very mobile and new acquaintances are many. The list becomes too long and unwieldy and difficult choices must be made. My parents’ Christmas card list seemed to stay the same until the day they died and I still send cards to one or two of those old family friends who seemed to have become almost as close as blood relations. We have a few of those on our list too, friends who were at our wedding or whose children were early friends with ours. But the rest are fluctuating. Some years I feel ruthless. Names are crossed off, because they never get in touch. More names go because we fell out: their children behaved badly in our home; we disagreed about politics or religion; they never even rang us after we moved away but dropped us because we no longer lived round the corner…
This year I am looking at things from a different perspective. I must be getting old! Life is too short, it seems, for those kinds of disagreements to matter. I am busy putting names back on the list. Surely, in view of our common humanity, there are more things to agree on than to dispute? Friends are precious. I am slowly learning that and would like, if it were possible, to retrieve the addresses of former friends, probably long moved on, who we have lost, through differing opinions or just neglect although, realistically, I can’t send cards to them all! Looking back, we’ve had some fun. Some of those friendships were very special, some of those families had children who watched the same firework displays with ours on Bonfire Night and shared the same tricycles in the back garden at weekends; with some of them we spent long nights, with a glass of wine in hand, discussing the nature of God and the universe and putting the world to rights. Of course we fell out – it happens all the time! But they were friends.
Nowadays we live in a temporary community. We are expats. Life is ‘temporary’; we live amongst people who are on temporary contracts, living in temporary houses and, worst of all, sharing temporary friendships. At least, that’s how life could be if we let it. I’m not keen to leave it that way! I have another growing list of friends – we email, we send photos, we forward jokes and thought-provoking anecdotes and one day, hopefully, will meet up again, in England, Turkey or Australia or who knows where? ‘Lest old acquaintance be forgot’, I must look forward to another new year of emails and phone calls, photos and maybe visits one day and I must remember to value those close-at-hand family and friends whilst I have them, ‘for the sake of auld lang syne’.
A very happy blogging New Year to you all!
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