Friendship Bracelets

I had a post all worked out a couple of months ago, all about the difficulty in making friends when you are old and decrepit and thirty-something. I had been pondering it because MrB and I had been tentatively reaching out our hands in friendship to the parents of Miss H's Best Friend, let's call them Jim and Sandy, and I was quietly pleased and excited with the results...

We had decided to make an effort to interact with the people around us, break out of the church/family enveloping cosiness. It's much easier for MrB, this getting-to-know-people, but then he's always been the social butterfly. I've been the one lurking in the kitchen trying to avoid conversation. And if some plucky soul decides to confront me and force sociability on me, I usually respond with such withering sarcasm and self-depreciation that they beat a hasty retreat. This is not how one makes friends, apparently.

A chance comment by Sandy when she came to pick her daughter up after Miss H's birthday party this year made me think that I'm not alone. It surprised me and made me consider that friendship, rather than school-gate acquaintanceship, could be a possibility. One of the walls in our hallway is entirely covered in bookshelves - it's quite a long hallway, with the bookcases on one side, and a long pew on the other - remembering that our house is a converted chapel. Most people just walk straight past them, but Sandy stopped and had a really good look. We ended up at the front door chatting about books and she mentioned that she loves looking at other people's bookcases (don't we all!), because she can get a good feel as to what kind of person they are, how smart they are... Now that sounds like intellectual snobbery, and it is, but isn't that how we all react when we see a house with a handful of books displayed - mostly Dan Brown and Bryce Courtney - don't we all make snap judgements? Luckily I passed Sandy's stringent test - she said my books were intriguing...

Her comment intrigued me, and got me thinking that yes, we could very well be friends... so I took the plunge and invited the Smiths over for dinner. They have 3 kids - their son is in the same class as Miss M and is one of her good friends; A is bestest friends with Miss H, and has been since Kindy; little N is in Kindy. Dinner was lovely - a BBQ outside on the deck, lots of red wine, kids going wild down in the rumpus room... MrB and Jim got stuck into deep theological arguments (It wasn't me! MrB assured me... He started it!) Sandy and I made tentative comments about other mothers, teachers, kids and discovered we're on the same wave-length.

It was an all-together grown-up experience, and one that I really enjoyed.

That was back in May, and since then we've had a few get-togethers, along with the usual school holiday exchange-of-children... But in the last 6 weeks or so life has been getting a little hectic - MrB's school and uni load increasing, school assignments, family commitments - all taking precedence over socialising with anyone, let alone 'new' friends.

I did notice that the Smiths weren't around at footy (their son plays AFL too), but I thought that Sandy may have had health issues - she had treatment for breast cancer last year - and I was in a quandary. I asked H if everything was OK with the Smiths, and she said that the kids had had a holiday with their grandparents, but were back at school and everything was fine. I was torn... what if Sandy is sick, and when I ring it's the millionth call she's received that day? I don't want to bother her... I decided not to, especially when H confirmed things were OK, and then of course, any good intentions got swept away by the sheer force of Life.

MrB ran into Sandy at the supermarket the other day, and asked how everyone was as we hadn't seen them around... Turns out things couldn't have been worse. She was surprised we didn't know, as A had told H, but unfortunately this had coincided with a giant lecture we had given H about the importance of keeping secrets... She rang MrB in the evening to give him the whole story, as it wasn't appropriate for telling in a supermarket aisle. And MrB then rang me, as I was driving across Sydney for a meeting. What he told me blindsided me completely. Utterly.

She hadn't been around because she'd been in hospital. She had nearly died. Jim had always been controlling and manipulative but he had suddenly snapped and beaten her so badly that she'd lost a kidney and suffered a ruptured eardrum. He was in gaol, having been refused bail three times.

I rang her straight away, just to let her know that now we knew, if there was anything at all we could do, then we would... And I apologised profusely for not ringing earlier - she understood completely and said she'd been going to ring me but didn't want to burden me... She and the kids were doing surprisingly well, and that the terrible tension that had pervaded every aspect of their family life was now gone...

The new has shocked me, shaken me to the core. My reaction was visceral. I have never known anyone who has suffered domestic violence before. I mean, I haven't grown up in some sheltered community, I know it happens, but it had never happened to a friend. I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to care for her... I'm in that quandary again, but I'm damned if I'm going to take the easy option and let it all slip away. But it's so hard to know what the right thing to do is, the right way to care for a friend with whom you are only just learning to walk.

Even more pressing is how to help H care for her friend - her poor frightened and hurting friend who actually heard the entire attack, who heard her mother screaming and crying and could do nothing... How do you help eight year olds through this?

I'm a little lost...