By Liz Moree
“You know, I would have been a much better friend before texting”
I exclaimed to my husband the other evening. He was calmly sat at the dinner table, accosted by my sudden, but not uncharacteristic, proclamation. Some other recent tirades included the exasperating latch on my toddler’s highchair tray that catapulted spaghetti as I fought to release it and the sub-zero temperatures inside grocery stores throughout summer. There is simply no need for such an arctic environment. But, as I looked at my phone with 36 unopened text messages and countless more on other apps, I knew the weight of this frustration was more complex and markedly deeper.
Many of the messages were from very loved friends providing dear life updates. They moved. She got a new job. Their son, whom I knew with missing teeth and a bashful grin, now sports shaggy hair and a smirk at his high school soccer tournament. Her husband is gone for training, and she’s looking forward to family coming after managing a household with three kids by herself for several weeks. One friend is lonely at a new duty station, struggling to find people to laugh with over Korean food. One friend just had a baby. And one friend is simply checking in because she knows my past year hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing.
All unopened. All unanswered. Well some opened, but then marked “unread,” so that I remember to reply. After all, life is just a little busy, and I simply need to remember to reply when I have the time right? I’d reply when my toddler slept better so I could be more thoughtful, or after I got the dishes put away, or once my phone was fully charged, or the moon phase was just right, or mercury goes into retrograde and Taylor Swift releases a new album of melancholy verses to inspire and spur action– hello October 3rd!
I’d glance with shame at the “36” when getting into the car, opening maps to find the grocery store. I’d sit paralyzed skimming the messages before an appointment, knowing full well I had 10 minutes while my toddler napped peacefully in the backseat. Why couldn’t I just start typing?
What would I type? “I’m so glad you got a new job! You look really happy! I so miss our days of substitute teaching together– all the laughs about the students, and our impromptu weekend trip where we slept in a shoddy, one bedroom apartment and navigated an entire city on Lime scooters. Can you believe that was 6 years ago? Will I ever take a trip with you again? Live in the same city as you again? See you in person and glimpse your excitement wandering into a back-alley book shop? When the breeze carried a hint of fall on my walk last night, I thought of how grateful I am for that space in time we shared. You made my life brighter, and sometimes I wish we could go back to that chapter of life, just for a week or so. Anyway, happy Saturday!”
36 messages, a fraction of a kilobyte to my phone, were a steel anchor weighing down my spirit. The senders weren’t friends from high school that life and circumstance lulled me away from. These are the friends that were my life, my everything in their season. The type of friends just down the road, at your place in a moment’s notice when your toddler was just doing too much. When the servicemembers were gone, again, and you felt lonely, bored, and in need of a movie marathon, often all of the above. The weekend dinners, holidays away from blood-family. Help when you got t-boned and had to navigate a foreign legal system. When one of your sons broke his leg and you needed help caring for your 2 year old. A village that understood everything you were going through, because they lived in the same village. Forever friends that you would never leave, but that a dynamic military career (that brought you together in the first place!) will inevitably lead you separate ways.
If you’re lucky, you get at least one friend at each duty station. Sometimes you’re gifted with more. Sometimes an entire community through church, or a club, or other good fortune. If you’re like me, you’ll gather all of them in your heart, and care deeply for them all. Your love for them will be no less, even when your life patterns and circumstances mean your friendship isn’t quite the same. Even when keeping up through social media or over the phone is difficult – tedious in a way that your third cup of coffee on their military-brown couch in your athleisure, is not. The community, the friendships just don’t translate to the next duty station.
And so you find yourself exclaiming to your husband that you’d be a better friend before texting, when what you really mean is, stable? Always just down the road from my friends. After all, the coffee is made, the couch is ready, and my athleisure is on!
In the age of social media we can keep tabs on hundreds of people in a way I don’t think we were ever meant to. Intimate glances into people’s lives without the requirement of actual intimate friendship. For the military family, this is a relief. A glimpse into a precious present of a friend on a new road, a heartaching reminder of a beautiful past when they were just down the road from you. The problem remains that life isn’t designed to maintain that level of intimacy with so many, so spread about.
So what do we do when we have so many precious to us, scattered across the corners of the planet? I’m still working on that answer, and admittedly not doing a great job in the process. Messages left unanswered too long, check-ins delayed. Though I’m cheering for you from afar, you may only feel the distance.
I cling to grace. Precious friendships whose embers glow despite the time and distance. And I treasure the goodness so many of my friends have for me when a call comes after a long stretch of silence. When a baby shower gift arrives well past the party. When a life update includes “my first baby just turned one, we moved to North Carolina, and my dog died,” but also “I thought of you because I used the mug with the mushrooms on it while drinking coffee on my military-brown couch.” I know that everyone I held dear at any duty station is just as dear to me now. The memories I shared with you spur me into the toil and drudgery of finding new friends and community at new places. The knowledge that everyone needs their “person” and their “people.”
For today, I’ll send a “love” reaction through Instagram to your most recent adventure, set my mushroom mug on the end table our other friend gave us when they moved, and reach out to a budding friend to have three cups of coffee. And while they drive over, hopefully reply to your text.
Liz Moree is a Colorado native and Army wife of 9 years, with five moves, to include two international, framing her enterprises. Throughout the past decade, she has worked in secondary schools in various capacities, earned her M.A.T. in Secondary ELA, directed a base-wide youth program for adolescent military teens, and experienced more than her fair share of resolving vehicle crises amidst language barriers.
