The Birthday Party

Last night, I went to a friend's birthday party. It was a very fine party.

When children are young, they seem to able to play with anyone. You plump kids together and unless they have jarringly different temperaments and social skills, somehow they find ways to get along without judgement or complaint. As we get older, we learn to discriminate. We do different things with different friends. In our twenties and thirties, we are self-absorbed and even hostile to people who are different from us. Few of us naturally reached out to befriend others.

Then as we get older and become more accepting of who we are, so we become more accepting of others. That was the birthday party yesterday. I knew the birthday girl and was plumped into the midst of a group of women who have known each other since grade school. I can just hear Bro feeling the awkwardness of that, and I know in my twenties and thirties, that would have been an uncomfortable situation indeed.

But now in our fifties, we are in our element. Some of the women hadn't seen each other for years and were trying to catch up. This was as good a set up as any for me to learn about them. Some just wanted to spend a couple of pleasant hours together. We got that too. We welcomed each other's company and were interested in what everyone is doing, with no care of how our association may reflect on who we are. Contrast that to our early years when we didn't want to talk to anyone who didn't make up look cool, or The Boy's current insistence on not mixing certain groups of friends. I like our free-form way much better.

One woman commented that in our fifties, we become the woman we imagined we'd be in our early, idealistic teen years. We make things happen and life flows. I reflected on this idea and thought, She's right - I can't deny the existence of this flow in my own life.