Friday, A Question for the Ages

I am leaving here in about an hour and half for a weekend away with the kids…and I have nothing in my suitcase!  So here is another effort in procrastination…

Advice time ladies…or more reassurance…I am not totally weird or lost in left field on this one, am I?

Facebook Friends:

I am not friends with this guy...and he is my dad!

I seem to be odd ball out when it comes to Facebook friends. I have maybe 35 friends (okay I stand corrected I have 84…I didn’t realize that I know 84 people, but I am glad you are all my friends!) while the rest of the world has 300 friends.  It is just who I am. I much prefer a close group of great friends to a larger group of acquaintances. I am sure there are some of you ladies who can keep up with a whole yearbook’s worth of people and feel totally connected with each and every one, I just can’t.

All of that said, I am not friends with many of my friends’ husbands. A few of those husbands are not on Facebook.  I only counted three that I am friends with – two are out of town and one I use to babysit for so I saw him more often than I see most of my friends’ husbands.  I just don’t feel right about being Facebook friends with everyone’s husband or guys in general and this from the girl who until post-college always had more guy friends than girl friends. Even my maid of honor was a guy.

Several of my husband’s friends have sent me friend requests – mostly guys from school who he is close to. I haven’t accepted those. It isn’t that I don’t like the guys, it’s just I don’t feel the need to be “friends” with them. I need a little space from that part of his life – school has already infiltrated so much of our family life.

I am friends with one of my husband’s  friends, who I have never met, but he is someone who is important in my husband’s life. At this point in all of our busy lives Facebook is the best opportunity I have to get to know him in any sense.

And it is not that I spend my time on Facebook  man-hating. If I had to guess I would say that since I am part of a couple, it is his job to be friends with the guys? Or maybe in this place in my life I have so little girl time, I don’t feel the need to drag the guys a long?

What do you think? Who do you not friend? Who do you friend?...and the infamous last question, WHY?

Friday

I was on Facebook the other day and somehow got to a view of my friendship with someone. There was no picture of my and this friend. I looked at another of my friendships, and again no picture.

Again, and again, and again.

Finally I found one with a picture, but it wasn’t of my friend and me. It was a picture of our kids.

And then another, but the picture was at least 2 decades old!

I don’t have all the friends in the world…especially not on Facebook. I have always been a quality over quantity kind of girl, probably a symptom of shyness (my mother would say it has to do more with my high standards, but that is for another day.).

Regardless of how many friends I have or where I have them, it made me sad that there is no proof…there are no pictures, not even on Facebook.

But why?

Is one of us always the photographer? Do we only take pictures when the kids are around? Why aren’t we in those?  Have we gotten to the point where life is no longer worthy of being captured in photographs? There are still memories to be made, right?

I don’t want to be one of those moms who are never in the picture because I am not perfect. I want my kids to remember what I looked like when they thought I was beautiful – even if I don’t think I am beautiful.

I want them to know that I had friends, not as a matter of conquest or popularity, but as a token of who supported me and who I supported, a reminder of who loved them, too, a chronicle of the places and people in their lives, of what shaped our family, of who I am as person.

Maybe, it is rooted in my being an only child, so there are not family or sibling pictures either. But I want my kids to know that friendship and support are important, that things like distance and time and life are surmountable – because of, with the help of, and worth the effort for – Friends.

I am not sure how to get pictures of me with friends without seeming a little creepy. I don’t want over posed portraits, just candid moments in time and you can’t force that. 

So, I suppose I need to be better about bringing my camera along. I need to be better about asking someone to take a picture. I need to be better about making time for friends – time that is meaningful and picture worthy.

And that is Friday.