The Gift of Old Friends

Today is my birthday, and this month I decided to give myself a different kind of present.

I started reconnecting with old friends.

Not networking. Not “circling back.” Not transactional coffee meetings disguised as friendship. Actual reconnecting. The kind where you sit down across from people who knew you twenty years ago and somehow still know you now.

Buck and Dave and I had our annual lunch last week. We’ve done it every year this month for 26 years.

Twenty-six years.

There is something almost sacred about friendships that endure. Career changes. Victories. Disappointments. Elections. Losses. Reinventions. We pick up exactly where we left off every single time. Updates about kids and grandkids. A few stories we’ve all heard before but still laugh at anyway. And politics. Always politics.

And it was nice.

Not productive. Not strategic. Just genuinely nice.

The kind of lunch you wish could go on another hour. The kind where everyone says, “We need to do this more often,” while fully understanding you’ll probably see each other at the exact same restaurant at the exact same time next year.

Honestly, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

There is something unique about these long professional friendships. They are different than my closest girlfriends, but meaningful in an entirely different way. These are the colleagues who became genuine friends along the way. The people who saw you exhausted, ambitious, overwhelmed, hopeful, frustrated, growing. The people who understand certain stories without explanation because they lived them with you.

This month reminded me how many of those people have shaped my life.

There’s Judith, who retired from the early childhood profession several years ago and who, in her mid-eighties, can still run circles around me. We had lunch recently and I left thinking, once again, how lucky I am to know her. Less than a year after losing her husband, she is slowly finding her groove again. She is an avid reader, endlessly curious, sharp as ever, and still one of the most interesting people in any room she enters.

She once told me something I have never forgotten: you have to do things while you can. Travel while you can. Experience life while you can. Because eventually there comes a point where you can’t.

And another lesson: keep your girlfriends close and treat them like gold.

She has lived both truths.

Then there’s Lynanne. We had coffee recently and, as always, ran out of time.

She worked for me years ago at Groundwork Ohio, and even then it was obvious she was exceptional. Smart, creative, talented, incredibly funny, and caring as hell. Over time, our professional relationship evolved into a genuine friendship, and watching her eventually step into the CEO role after me has been one of the real joys of my career.

We still work in the same orbit, but I no longer see her nearly every day the way I did for so many years. Sitting across from her recently reminded me that some people become woven into the fabric of your daily life so gradually you don’t fully appreciate it until time and distance change the rhythm. It also reminded me how lucky I was to spend so many years building something meaningful alongside people I cared about.

Brian has long been one of my favorite combinations: exceptionally smart and easy to be around. One of the smartest state budget minds I know, he combines brilliance with genuine warmth and good humor. We had lunch recently and I realized halfway through how refreshing it felt to simply enjoy each other’s company. Neither of us needed anything. No ask. No angle. Just old stories, current realities, family updates, and memories from another chapter of life.

It felt oddly luxurious.

Dan has always been what I would call a work soulmate. Thoughtful. Empathetic. Wise in a grounded, practical way that has helped steady me more than once over the years. He genuinely cares about people. Not performatively. Not strategically. Authentically. I tend to hang onto his insights like they are precious diamonds because they usually are.

We met for coffee recently and I found myself wishing it didn’t end. The kind of conversation where you leave feeling steadier somehow. More grounded. More understood.

And Mike. A little bit Debbie Downer, a little bit war story, a little bit perpetual motion. He always seems to be trying to solve a problem, fix something, help someone, or figure out how to make things work.

But beneath all of that is someone deeply conscientious and deeply caring. The kind of person who keeps showing up for people, over and over again. No one works harder. And somehow he still manages to lace even the hardest conversations with enough humor and self-deprecation to make you laugh while he’s explaining why the sky may be falling.

Over the years, ours became the kind of friendship that grows out of shared work, long history, mutual respect, aggravation, laughter, and the quiet understanding that you’re always in each other’s corner.

We had a cocktail recently that felt like no time had passed at all. Like we had simply slipped back into the same bar seats we occupied years ago, picking up old stories and familiar rhythms without missing a beat.

Different personalities. Different paths. Different politics even at times.

But connected by our life’s work.

By long meetings and campaigns and impossible deadlines and shared purpose. By years of trying, in our own imperfect ways, to leave things a little better than we found them.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand that professional life is not only about titles or accomplishments or influence. It is also about the people who quietly walk beside you through it all.

The ones who get you through the hard seasons.

The ones who know your spouse’s name, your children’s milestones, where you like to vacation, and where you go when life gets hard. The ones who remember who you were before the résumé lines and LinkedIn headlines.

We take these friendships for granted sometimes because they exist in the background of our lives. But they matter deeply.

This month, I gave myself the gift of making time for them again.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons I find myself surprisingly happy to be turning 56.

Because if I’m lucky, there are still more birthdays ahead of me. More lunches. More stories. More coffee that shouldn’t end. More cocktails that feel like no time has passed at all. More opportunities to sit across from people who helped shape my life and remember just how grateful I am they did.

Honestly, I’d like a lot more of that.