By Hyacinth Vanderpool
After the death of a longtime friend, I got to thinking…
“How’s it going?”
“Nothing much happening here.”
It sounds like a conversation that’s going to be over fairly quickly. Yet between two people who are comfortable together, it can lead anywhere. Dinner plans. A television program. A small complaint about packaging that now requires scissors, a random incident, a story about a grandchild, something funny that happened earlier, anything!
Half an hour later, neither person has delivered any important news. Yet, there was plenty to say.
Still, having nothing new to report can become a surprisingly good reason for putting off a phone call. You think of someone and then hesitate. Your week has been much like the week before. The thing you were waiting to hear about hasn’t been settled. You’ll call when there’s something to tell.
That can happen especially easily during a stretch of life spent mostly at home. Perhaps you’re caring for someone, between jobs, or settling into retirement. A friend asks what you’ve been doing, and the honest answer feels rather short and uninteresting.
“Much the same, really.”
There can be a little embarrassment in that answer, even when the days have been full. You’ve been occupied from morning to evening. It just hasn’t produced a story you think anyone would want to hear.
Meanwhile, time passes. After a few weeks, getting in touch starts to feel like a bigger undertaking. Now there’s a gap to explain. You imagine needing a whole afternoon for a proper catch-up, and a whole afternoon is difficult to find.
Of course, a long conversation can be lovely, but also an unexpected ring at the wrong moment can be one more thing to manage.
Then there’s the situation where some friendships settle very comfortably into infrequent contact. People have different appetites for phone calls. And affection doesn’t give us automatic access to someone’s evening.
But when the hesitation is simply “I don’t have anything interesting to say,” it may be worth wondering whether your friend is expecting “interesting”.
Perhaps they’d enjoy hearing your familiar opinion about something quite unimportant. Perhaps there’s something on their mind, and they haven’t called for much the same reason. Or perhaps it will be a short conversation because one of you really does need to get dinner started.
There’s something companionable about those small glimpses into another person’s day. Knowing they’re trying a different recipe. Hearing them interrupt themselves to answer someone in the next room. Picking up a conversation that briefly wanders, pauses, and wanders again.
A written update can tell someone what’s happened. A voice brings other things with it: amusement, hesitation, the sound of someone becoming more animated as they remember a detail.
For people who prefer messages, even a small exchange can have that familiar ease. It needn’t begin with an apology for being boring or an account of everything since you last spoke.
Sometimes the whole reason for getting in touch fits into one sentence.
“I was thinking about you. Have you got a few minutes?”
And that matters because one day you may not be able to.