Multi-Gen

Multi-Gen -- sounds like a breakfast cereal or some miracle vitamin supplement, eh? Nope, it's Hillel's tremendous post about some dear friends.

As we all know all too well, friendships come and friendships go. Relationships might simply fade for lack of food and water, or they might catastrophically implode. The reasons that friendships endure might be harder to define than the reasons that they end. Personally, I think laughter has a lot to do with it. My good friends are the ones who enjoy life’s jokes, even when they are played on us.

There are two relationships in my life that make me wonder about nature and nurture in the realm of friendships. Both are now in their third generation, spanning something like 60 years. In one, my father and a fellow rabbi got to know each other professionally, and they and their wives then became good personal friends of many years standing. My wife and I got to know their son David and his wife Heather when we belonged to the same minyan, then they moved to the other end of town and we lost touch. When, years later, we moved to that end of town, we renewed the friendship. Now here’s the kicker: as soon as our older boys (who were about five at the time) laid eyes on each other, they were instant friends, and have remained so. Our second sons took a little longer to warm up to each other, but are now very close buddies. David and I ride and go to jazz gigs together; our wives sing in harmony. Considering how much time we spend together, we joke that the four of us are co-parenting six kids.

The other multi-generational connection comes from my mother’s side. She was in Brandeis University’s third graduating class and was friends with a couple of just-older classmates who later married. Fast forward almost twenty years and the two families found themselves living within a mile of each other. The kids were about the same age and hung out; my sister and their older daughter were particularly friendly (and remain so). Now skip another two decades to one afternoon when I went to pick up my pre-school daughter at day care. On my way in, I saw a familiar name on a truck outside. I walked in, took one look at a guy who was picking up his daughter, and said, “Adam?!” Not only had we found each other after all those years, but our girls had picked each other out of the crowd to befriend (now they’re in high school and they’re still pals).

So how does this happen? Is there something like friend genes that get passed on from generation to generation or is it simply a coincidence that each set of kids found each other without knowing anything about the previous connection? Maybe shared values and life paths brought us all to the same places at the same times and we jumped on the opportunity. In the end, I have no idea what it all means, but I take comfort in the continuity (and I know that my mother does too). There are too many things that rive people in this brief life. I’m happy to tap into something that adheres us.