Tend to your friendships.

Friendships are like flowers.

Friendships are a lot like flowers.

It’s not difficult to plant a seed, give it a little water, and under the right conditions, watch it grow.  But inevitably, weeds begin to sprout up around that flower.  If it’s had time to take root, it can withstand a lot.  But if it’s not tended to, those weeds can eventually choke the very life from it.

I have friends I’ve known for twenty years plus, and the roots of our friendship have grown really deep.  We could go weeks, sometimes months without talking to each other, then pick up the phone, make the call and start talking as if we’d just spoken the day before.

I have to believe our friendships work that way because we tended to them early on.  But when life grows hectic and busy and requires commitment to so many different responsibilities, it’s easy to let the weeds of everyday existence – the little stuff that sucks up the extra minutes in our days – creep in to the point that the friendship suffers.

Even though my friends and I know without saying that we’re always there for each other, there have been times when I could have done a far better job in reaching out to them.  Times when they probably could have used my shoulder to lean on. Or at least someone to listen.

This hit home to me recently while visiting with a long-time friend when we had an opportunity to meet up in Richmond, Virginia for a twenty-four hour yak fest.  In the course of our talks, it amazed me to rediscover how much she knows about me, things I had long ago forgotten I’d ever told her.  Things I needed to talk about at the time, and she was a willing sounding-board.

No matter how far we get in this world, or how many places we go, life can be lonely without those friendships.  We need someone else to really know us.  To remember the details of our history.  To get where we’re coming from when no one else does.  And I think we need to be that for someone else as well.  To matter to them in the same way.

So I’m newly resolved to be a far better gardener than I’ve been in recent years – one who tends to my friendships with the love and care that they deserve.

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Get on the consistency bandwagon with exercise.

Consistency gets the job done.

My mama(one Southernism I refuse to give up) is one of the most consistent people I know when it comes to staying fit.  She started exercising at age thirty-five, back when that made her just a tad quirky.  She loved it though, working out every morning at five-thirty to Body Electric on the PBS channel for a solid hour, six days a week, every week.  Sundays off.

She’s sixty-eight now, and years ago she added a three-mile walk to that routine, some weights and a treadmill, and it’s no coincidence that people have mistaken us for sisters(ouch).  That habit she developed so long ago at a time in her life when it would have been easy to say, aah, it’s too late to start this, I’m too old – has not only kept her healthy, but beautiful, too.  She has this glow that’s, well, enviable.  She is also one of the most positive people I know.  I’m convinced that, too, is no coincidence.

If I can take a page from her exercise notebook, it is that I don’t have to set the world on fire with record-breaking 5K times or cycle to Delaware and back to feel good about my workouts.  But if I make it part of the fabric of my everyday life, I hope I will be where she is when I’m her age.  Looking as if I made the time to take care of myself.  Consistently.

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