SUNDAYS THESE DAYS

Sunday afternoon found us at the home of friends, again.  Lately we’ve been there every Sunday, and even though we’re starting to feel like boomerangs we are always pleasantly surprised to find ourselves welcomed back.  On our first visit, Mrs. Gibson told us to make ourselves at home.  “She really means that,” someone else said, maybe because we still looked hesitant.  Somewhere along the line we must have been convinced, because the Gibson house is becoming very familiar . . .

I was working with a group of people on a project involving hot glue and popsicle sticks when Mark came in holding Lily, who recently turned one.

“You have a baby!” I said, redundantly.  “Where did you get her?”

“I just found her on the ground and picked her up,” he said.  “Isn’t that how it works?”

Whether or not his methods were quite kosher, she stayed with him for the better part of an hour.  Mark was pulled into a card game and Lily sat in his lap, holding his cards, much to the amazement of her family, who told him several times that she doesn’t usually like unfamiliar people.  She had never met him before that day.

Back in July we were invited to meet a group for lunch after church, and we spent forty-five minutes trying to find the restaurant in increasingly frantic stages of frustration.  “We’ll never make friends if we do things like this,” Mark lamented.  We did finally find the place, about an hour late, where we were quickly introduced to twenty unfamiliar faces.  We ordered food in a rush and tried to simultaneously eat and keep up conversation with a crowd whose plates were already long empty.  It felt like a very inauspicious start.

I have always been frustrated with movies that show friendships blossoming out of a dropped wallet and a friendly smile.  Real life, to my everlasting chagrin, does not work as easily or as concisely.  In high school I once sat next to a girl on the bus who introduced herself and then started talking to me as if we’d known each other for a few years instead of a few minutes, and she brings the number of friends I’ve made that way up to one.

But things do happen sort of by accident sometimes.  Last week we went to the Gibsons’ house on Sunday after lunch to watch a football game (which we were only vaguely interested in) and ended up staying to watch the season premiere of Sherlock (which we would have moved heaven and earth to see).  We didn’t leave until late that night.  A week later we were back again for a repeat performance of almost-accidentally spending an entire day there.

This Sunday, someone looked up mid-afternoon and asked, “Where did Lily go?”

“I think she’s with my husband,” I said, and a glance into the other room confirmed it.

Lily’s mother looked impressed.  “I guess she’s really turning over a new leaf.”

That day when we showed up quite unfashionably late to lunch seems very far in the past.  I guess we’ve turned over a new leaf, too.