Make New Friends...

One of the biggest concerns I had two years ago when we made the big move to Oregon was whether or not I'd be able to make new friends here. It's not that I have a particularly hard time making friends, but since I'm not the most outgoing person in the world, it doesn't always come easy. I knew all of two people my own age when we first got here and they were the wives of my husband's cousins. It turns out that I became good friends with both of them, but since I couldn't exactly build a social network around only two people, I was forced to step outside of my shy comfort zone and, gasp!, initiate conversations with complete strangers.

Of course, having a kid makes it a lot easier to meet new people (other parents at least), if only because at least you've got one thing in common. So when we first moved here, I signed Will up for a gymnastics class and an art class, both of which he loved. Unfortunately, I was not equally enamored with the classes and didn't find any moms who struck me as anyone I wanted to hang out with outside of class. We then tried a class at Gymboree and we were both hooked. It didn't take long before Will made his first real friend (he had just turned 2) and I, in turn, found some moms who seemed worth getting to know. I hope that doesn't come off as snobbish as it sounds to me because that's certainly not the way it's intended, but really, we all know what kinds of people we do and don't mesh with, don't we? And it seems sort of silly to spend time getting to know people with whom we won't ultimately get along, doesn't it?

So now here we are almost two years since making the move from the warm climes of California to rainy Oregon and I'm happy to say that we've all made friends. Yes, it took some time, but it was well worth the wait. Will has a good group of friends, both kids he's met at Gymboree and those he knows from preschool; the list of those he wants to invite to his birthday continues to grow. They're all sweet kids and I get a real kick out of watching him play and interact with them. But the best part? They come from good families with good parents, people worth getting to know and befriend. As much as I feared that this move would mean a whole lot of loneliness for me, quite the opposite has happened. I've met and made friends with more moms (and a few dads as well) here than I ever did back in California. Perhaps it's because people in the Bay Area tend to wait until later in life to have kids and the age gap was just too much to overcome. Or maybe there's just a bit less pretense here than the Bay Area. Whatever the case, as much as I miss my family, friends, and hometown, life here is good.