Middle age | Eyerollingmom

For the past few years ― without apology ― I’ve taken stock of the people in my orbit and have treated myself to a cleanse; I’ve coined it De-friend December. I take a thoughtful assessment of my friends and decide if, well, we are. There’s no complicated algorithm or formula. It’s actually pretty basic and focuses on one extremely humble question: Are we really friends?

I drop the dead weight and the posers and the pretenders and all the other friends who literally have not bothered with me for the better part of the year. Then I flip the calendar and start fresh. The act is both refreshing and reaffirming: Friendships do not have to be transactional, but they should absolutely be reciprocal.

This notion has become my middle-age mantra. My friends are hugely important to me and it’s not a stretch to understand why my reliance on and affection for my circle is fierce: My parents are gone. My kids are getting older and leaving to explore new places. My extended family is a day’s drive away.

I may be getting old and cranky (cue my kids nodding) but I’m finding the older I get, the more important my circle is becoming. Also, perhaps ironically, how much smaller it’s becoming.

This is weirdly satisfying and a bit surprising because I’ve always had large groups of friends. In high school, I smoked enough to spend time with the bad kids, cartwheeled enough to hang with the cheerleaders, and drank enough beer to fit in with every other unsupervised stereotype of the ’80s (Most Popular 1984: Never forget).

I then went on to find a great group of gals in college; 40+ years later, we just spent a weekend together. (Pro tip: Hold on to your female friends. They tend to outlast some of the spouses.) My point is, I have always loved having large groups of interesting, fun folks around me.

What I’m finding now is I no longer crave the crowd, especially the crowd that missed the memo about friendships being a give-and-take. My circle of friends is shrinking because I’m surrounding myself with only the best ones.

Middle-age friendships are a curious mix, especially for those of us who are parents. Unlike our chosen high school or college connections, adult friends aren’t always rooted in common experiences or memorable hijinks, but rather kid connections. Most of the friends we scoop up while in parenthood come from our ties to the community. And they’re great ― a significant and appreciated support system bound by shared involvements.

But eventually kids move on or kids move away and more often than not it becomes clear that Friday night lights were holding everything together. The camaraderie may be unmatched but when it comes to latter-day friendships, the foundation is unsteady ― built on happy events and traveling teams instead of years of true grit.

Plus, shit gets real in later life. Everyone’s happily posting on social media about their kids getting into shiny colleges, but no one’s announcing when they flunk out. Or overdose. Or get arrested. Who’s sharing that with 400 friends on social media? I guess I’ve whittled my number down to a size I’m comfortable sharing my shit with, warts and all.

Aiding and abetting in the Great Yearly Whittle was the pandemic.

When a contagion dictates how communal your community can be, relationships can get a bit murky. From the onset, friends were forced to retreat to their own little nuclear spaces.

By the time socialization began to return to normal it was harder to get the band back together. Some friendships strengthened, yet, alas, some severed.

I lost (what I’d believed to have been) a close friend over the past year and nothing particularly explosive happened to end things. The flame just flickered out between us and I suppose neither of us cared enough to question why. Not to say I didn’t go through the typical stages of grief that come with a loss; I wondered about it for quite a while, but eventually I accepted that people change and it’s simply OK. I also accepted that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s OK, too.

Around that same time I sat on a plane and read the following …

As we grow older we weed out our friendship circles the way we do our closets. Most women have a story about the friend that truly wasn’t.

— Anna Quindlen, “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake”

… and thought, welp, there you go. No other validation needed. With a toast to good times had, I let that friendship go.

So now, as De-friend December is upon me, I edit my friends to a more intimate number and do so without regret or reservation. I am way too old to give a rat’s ass about who’s angry or who feels slighted.

While not exactly over the hill, maybe from my vantage point atop the hill I’ve seen the proverbial light. I’ve certainly seen a lot of friends. Maybe I’ve developed a Spidey sense about spotting the keepers. Maybe a pandemic forced me to see the value of my time and the importance of the quality of people I share it with. Maybe I’m brilliantly pre-planning ― with four adult kids, it might be best to start whittling before any weddings hit the horizon, no?

Whatever the reason, I know I’m in a good place.

The secret sauce of friendship is that there doesn’t have to be a lot of them ― just strong ones. If 1984 wants her crown back, she can have it; I’m good.

(copied/pasted from its original publication in HuffPost, Dec. 2021)

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and has been featured in Boston Globe & Huff Post. She appeared in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone” presenting her popular essay The Thinking Girl’s Thong and her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series. That said, she still places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements (next would be as the $100,000 winner on that home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore). A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as Eyerollingmom/Tina Drakakis on Facebook, Instagram & Threads. Her fave collection of essays, A Momoir, can be found here (agent interest ALWAYS WELCOME!)

I will tell you: nothing opens your eyes faster than an unexpected hospital stay. Looking back, I was somewhat naïve. Did I really believe I would declare, welp, it’s been a full week – time to find out what this pesky stomach pain is all about and then not get whisked into an enforced staycation? I’m not the brightest band-aid in the box. I was admitted and rushed into a room faster than Augustus Gloop shot up that pipe from the chocolate river.

I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to all things medical. I’m fortunate, I know, because 1) this braggy mom can boast about a nurse son and 2) I really haven’t had the need to be knowledgeable. If you disregard the extra padding on my ass, I am, well, healthy. I was hardly the textbook candidate for the Diverticulitis diagnosis I received (a colon thing – and a great Google read btw – but a manageable disease all the same. Again, fortunate). In fact, when the discussion turned to post-discharge routines and what my new life might look like moving forward, it kinda went something like this:

Doc: You’re gonna have to start doing blahblahblah. Me: I already do that. Everyday.

Doc: Well you’re also gonna have to start blahblahblah. Me: I already do that. Everyday.

Doc: Ok, well then there’s the blahblahblah. Me: I already d… See? Frustrating.

Funny how we’re always searching for that scapegoat – which snotty kid in that classroom gave my kid this cold? – but there was no one to blame here. I didn’t do anything wrong and it just sort of happened. Life. It happens.

The staff tried to make me feel better, sharing stats (about one-third of all Americans will develop this condition by age 60) and anecdotes about certain doctors – marathon runners and absolute epitomes of good health who also had to live with this.

It’s a bummer that this is something I’ll now have on my radar from now on but there are far worse things and this is very, VERY minor in comparison. Given the horrifying hacking coughs, twilight moans and a humiliating lack of privacy around me, I quickly deduced I was significantly better off than the four other people in my shared room over those four days. Believe me, I am counting my blessings for sure.

But for someone who’s only ever been hospitalized to experience the joy of epidurals (at the indisputable happiest place on earth), this was rough.

Time tends to stand still when you’re enclosed by curtains for an extended period of time, without a window, without enough room for a comfortable chair to switch to, without anything but basic cable and daytime television, which, I might add, I was surprised to find is actually still on. (Hot take: watching Kelly Clarkson on mute, I came to the realization that I have never once been as excited talking to anyone as much as she is talking to everyone. Wait, AITA? I think I might be.)

Without access to windows or fresh air, I missed the emergence of spring here in New England, a string of glorious days I knew nothing about. Combined with sleep deprivation, zero food and a constant IV drip – not gonna lie – some pretty hefty depression settled in.

I felt like Dorothy, my refrain of I just want to go home becoming a mantra to anyone who’d listen. With every sympathetic explanation of why I couldn’t yet, I felt crashing waves behind my eyes, making me afraid to utter a syllable of response other than nodding my head, lest I start bawling and cause alarm, garnering a *new invitation to a *different ward. (Hot take: nurses are everything. EVERY thing. Wait, am I just biased? I think I might be. I certainly can’t be the only one who’s ever sank into a little Stockholm Syndrome with the level of adoration that grows within me towards these heroes.) But I digress.

When I got home it took a couple of days for all the IV meds and gases and exhaustion to exit my body so (lucky spouse o’mine!) my emotional state was all over the place. Fortunately, my melancholic mood and spontaneous weeping coincided perfectly with the release of Taylor’s tortured tracks. I spent the weekend in a fugue state of sad, sad songs, the Gilmore girls on a loop, and comfy clothing. Actually this was sublime and I’m thinking of doing it more often –well, minus the rabbit hole of an angst-filled icon’s ex-boyfriends, mystery lyrics and haunting black and white videos. (Hot take: I am now rightfully convinced I could live forever in the arms of a clean-faced, Post Malone. Wait, am I a Swiftie? I think I might be.)

The irony of this entire experience turned out to be my post-hospital treatment. I was ordered to adhere to a strict, two-week menu of food lacking fiber. No fruits, no vegetables, no salad, no kidding. Basically, I had to survive on the dietary demands of a four-year-old: white bread, white pasta, white potatoes, White Castle. It was a scorched earth disruption to the cosmic balance: all the foods I’ve been demonizing for so long were going to be the foods that healed me. Shut the front door.

It took me a second to fully understand the assignment. Really? I whispered, my memory flying to English muffins – remember those? I felt something wet slip from the corners of my lips. Alrighty then, I volunteer as Tribute.

It was legit; my recovery relied on rest (wink, wink), which actually meant bowel rest. There was to be very little action in that nether region of mine for the immediate future. I put an immediate moratorium on any flighty notion of a summer body and stocked up on the forbidden treasures that once took up residence in my kids’ lunchboxes: Ritz crackers, bananas and enough carbohydrates to keep that Atkins guy rolling in his grave for a while.

My experience (one star, would not recommend) was not my preferred use of PTO but it provided me with a few pretty profound takeaways.

Empathy, for one. When I found myself in the midst of midnight Volume Wars with the guy next to me (who’d fallen asleep with his TV speaker blaring in my direction), I wanted to crash through the curtain and decry his utter rudeness. I can’t stand Jimmy Fallon! I wanted to bellow. But I didn’t. The next day I overheard him arranging transportation for his pickup and heard the words halfway house. It dawned on me he hadn’t had one visitor the entire time and my heart broke a little. I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. You just never know what other people are going through.

Mortality is another. Traversing the other side of middle age is always a paradox: feeling young at heart while things are starting to break down. Anxiously waiting for the results of a CT scan, my only thoughts were of my first grandbaby on the way, the sons and daughters-in-law I’ve yet to meet in life, and all the things I haven’t done yet. Like a cold plunge it brought me to my current clarity, being …

Eat the bagel. On the first Sunday morning home, still woozy from potent take-home meds and queasy from a gnarly metallic taste in my mouth, I got up early (perks of a round-the-clock pill schedule) to find my husband gone. When he returned, he unpacked the newspaper and bagels from a local artisan bakeshop. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d enjoyed these thousand-calorie delicacies of perfection, nor could I recall when we’d last read the newspaper together. We used to have a Sunday subscription for shit’s sake. Why did we ever stop that, I wondered. It was blissful. And something I’ll take up again. Stop ignoring or putting off or devaluing your inner joys. Seriously, eat the bagel.

I now know more about the mighty colon and its needs and requirements than I ever thought I needed to know but hey, if that inches me any bit closer to a Trivia Night victory, I’m good with that. (Wait, am I a wellness expert? I think I might be.)

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(Friends! My Boston Globe Sunday Magazine feature is coming out soon! Follow my blog page or socials not to miss it! xoxo)

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and has been featured in Boston Globe & Huff Post. She appeared in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone” presenting her popular essay The Thinking Girl’s Thong and her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series. That said, she still places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements (next would be as the $100,000 winner on that home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore). A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as Eyerollingmom/Tina Drakakis on Facebook, Instagram & Threads. Her collection of essays, A Momoir, can be found here (agent interest ALWAYS WELCOME!)