19. Silver and Gold

“Make new friends, but keep the old…

One is silver and the other gold.”

The thing I perhaps feared most about moving to a new place at midlife was being able to make friends. My current friends assured me that I would have no problem making new friends in Oklahoma, but I was not so confident. Truth be told, I’m more of a hermit than I ever was. And--believe it or not--I’m actually a shy person by nature. And perhaps the biggest part of the problem is that I’m not sure I want new friends. I like my old friends. They are my family. I know that my circle can expand infinitely, but my motivation is low. I am happy, content with my “tribe.” And thanks to social media and several recent trips home, I don’t really feel lonely. But I have to admit, it is time for me to embrace my new community. So, I set off in search of folks who, if not kindred spirits, would at least be in my demographic. And I went to the most logical place they would gather.

I went to a Weight Watchers meeting.

I mean, hey, why not kill two birds with one stone, right? The stress of the impending move, then the goodbye party decadence, then the move itself resulted in a net gain of 20-some pounds since January. I could use a little reset in my diet. And one of the most popular places in Stillwater (besides church) where middle-aged women gather is a meeting room somewhat ironically placed just off the lobby in the hotel where we first stayed when visiting Stillwater in January. I was going back to where it all began, I guess.

The first time I attended a meeting was a Saturday morning. There were only a handful of people, and few spoke up. I had done Weight Watchers briefly almost 20 years ago, so I was mildly curious about the changes. Weigh-in was still horribly anxiety-inducing, but the program has changed, and learning all the new stuff kept me from being too bored. After that, I missed a couple of meetings, but I tried desperately to keep up exercise. I had also joined the university rec center and started a deep water exercise class. I figured it was a safe bet that this would be another sure-fire way to meet people, and I was right.

As I’ve said before, people in Stillwater are unbelievably friendly, and the women in this exercise class were no exception. One of them actually works in the International Student Office at OSU, and we chatted shop talk about F-1s and reinstatement and quotas and credentials evaluation, and all that other fun immigration-in-higher-ed jargon. But I still didn’t feel a real connection. There was no way to get to really know these people between laps of water jogging and bicep curls with foam “weights.” And as the classic break-up line goes, it was obviously not them, it was me. But the 20 pounds were still hanging on, so I kept going to class. I kept going to Weight Watchers, trying different class times. I kept trying.

Then one day I had a doctor’s appointment midday and decided to go to an earlier Weight Watchers meeting. And what do you know? Across from me sat three women from my water aerobics class! And as we chatted after class, we exchanged numbers so I could join them to do lap swimming on non-aerobics days. (One asked me if I do flip-turns. I wasn’t sure what the right answer was, so I responded with the truth:  “yes, I do flip-turns, but not very well. I usually end up perpendicular to the lane.” After a chuckle, she responded, “good. We don’t like people who do flip-turns. We like to chat between laps.”) We friended each other on Facebook. A couple of weeks later, when our water aerobics instructor couldn’t be there, I showed them a few things from my class back home. Later, I reported laughingly that yes, I had sort of taken over the class; my mother had always said I was bossy. “That’s not bossy. That’s a leader,” a woman named Tanya responded. I think I’m going to like these women.

But while I worried for myself, I was also worrying about my son making friends. He misses his old friends, and Skypes and Snapchats with them daily. Would he always be on his phone and not making new friends here? Would he be hanging onto the old friendships and missing an opportunity to make new ones? Last week I picked him up from school, and found myself waiting quite a bit longer than usual. When he finally sauntered up to the car I asked, “Why were you so late?”

“Well, sometimes I just stay and chat with a few people,” he responded.

I think we’ll be just fine.