There’s something magical about the comfort and interconnectedness that comes with befriending someone a few decades older.
We’ve all had a friend crush before. You meet someone and immediately feel that special spark and a deep desire to get to know them better. Suddenly, you want to know where they grew up, what their childhood was like, what neighborhood they live in, and what recipes they’ve been cooking up lately. Your friend crush pulls you in with their shimmering light, and the next thing you know, you’re imagining future hangouts together. Maybe you even feel some nervous butterflies, hoping they might want to be your friend, too.
For me, that person has often been three or four decades older. Sure, I’ve had plenty of friend crushes with people closer to my age, but there’s something magical about the comfort and interconnectedness of an intergenerational friendship. Befriending someone older can provide a certain steadiness, almost like they’re reaching out a soft hand and saying, “I’ve seen it all, darling. Come sit with me and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
When I first moved to New Orleans, it was Jeanette. I met her through my job at the time in the food and farming space. She’d walk into our warehouse with bundles of basil and bouquets of zinnias and “shrimp flowers” (named such because they resemble—yep, you guessed it—boiled shrimp!). It was hard not to smile when Jeanette entered a room, beaming with sunny energy and greeting us in her charming Southern accent.
Then 72 years old, Jeanette spent most of her days gardening in her signature wide-brimmed hat. But for her, this wasn’t just a fun retirement hobby (not that there’s anything wrong with that). She was growing flowers and food on vacant lots around the city—including land that had been overgrown and neglected since Hurricane Katrina—both to enjoy at home and to sell to local businesses. You could find her basil in a fresh pesto at a neighborhood Italian restaurant and her rose petals in a fragrant body oil made by a New Orleans skincare brand. In her free time, she taught neighbors how to grow their own herbs, veggies, and flowers, too, demonstrating what was possible in their small backyards and on their windowsills.
Jeanette has that go-getter gumption that’s inspiring at any age, but especially for someone in their 70s. This was immediate friend crush material for me, and inspired me to channel my own go-gettery-ness to take the first step and call her. After I dialed her up, we ended up chatting on the phone for over an hour. Within a few days, I was walking through her garden as she proudly pointed out every plant she had grown, as if they were her children.
Flash forward to our many hours together in the car running errands, pulling weeds in her gardens around the city, shopping at Costco (often with matching items in our baskets—great minds!), and assembling bouquets for my wedding. Jeanette was in my regular friend rotation just like anyone else. She also modeled to me what healthy aging could look like. Whether she was planting a new round of shrimp flowers, or teaching another gardening workshop to a new group of students, she reminded me that you can always keep learning, dreaming, and reinventing yourself no matter your age; that you can always nurture and sprout new seedlings, even if they don’t all blossom.
During times of transition—navigating new jobs in a new city—Jeanette was an especially important friend. She always picked up the phone when I called, and always provided a refreshing levity that reminded me not to take life too seriously. This felt especially remarkable coming from someone who’d already lived 70-something years of challenges, grief, ups and downs, and all the juicy life bits in between.
This ability to keep showing up and her commitment to getting to know her neighbors was also what first drew me to Ava, another New Orleans friend crush.
Also in her 70s, Ava posted on a neighborhood message board that she was offering sewing lessons. This was a few years after meeting Jeanette, when I was pregnant with my first child. I’d wanted to sew a quilt for my future baby (and maybe some cute rompers, too), so I decided to send her a message.
Learning to sew with Ava wasn’t anything like watching a how-to video on YouTube. She invited me over to her house to sit beside her at the sewing machine and watch her do basic stitches, then had me do them, guiding me through each tangly thread and unwieldy bobbin.
We’d sit together and stitch while sharing stories about our families, religious journeys, and favorite recipes, interspersed with quiet moments of just sitting next to each other at our sewing machines. This was another season of transition for me—preparing to enter motherhood—and without my mom nearby, I appreciated Ava sharing her nuggets of maternal wisdom, and her understanding on a deeper level that everything was changing for me, but somehow still staying the same.
I knew our friendship was really reaching a deeper level, too, when Ava and I started going on our own Costco trips together, which seems to be a trend in all my closest friendships. (Is it just me, or do those wide aisles and free samples create the perfect space for meandering conversations?)
More recently, both of these friendships have evolved. When I moved from Louisiana to Rhode Island a couple years ago, I also moved away from both Jeanette and Ava. While we no longer have regular in-person time, we still text and share photos; and whenever we do get on the phone together, you better believe it’s going to be at least an hour-long chat, since there’s always so much to cover.
I’ve been lucky enough to make new friends in my new neighborhood, often at the playground with fellow parents around my age (or at least within the same decade), and I’m starting to feel more settled. But while this has been a blessing, it’s also been a stark reminder that I’ve been lacking in the intergenerational friendships department. This hole has felt even bigger when I think about my daughters growing up without their grandparents nearby. I knew I’d have to be more intentional about seeking intergenerational friendships if I wanted to share their magic, and show my daughters that friendship has no age limit.
Our weekly neighborhood potlucks—a tradition we had in New Orleans that we brought up to Providence—are a natural place to meet folks of all ages, and Nancy has become a recent regular. She has two daughters, born in the 1980s like me, so there was an instant familiarity when we met. She seemed to get me on some level, knowing what it was like to raise daughters around my age, and I seemed to get her on some level—she was a nurse just like my mom. We bonded over the challenges of weaning your last baby after years of breastfeeding, our shared love of recycling, and our having spent time in the same small town in Ireland coincidentally. On top of that, her sesame noodles at potluck were SO good—all enough to spark a new friend crush.
Like me, Nancy had recently moved to the neighborhood. She had grandkids about an hour away but wanted to deepen her relationships with nearby neighbors. I texted her the next day inviting her to go for a walk. She accepted with a purple heart emoji, so I knew we were off to a good start. We’ve been on a couple walks since, and our conversations continue to flow.
In 2021, Jeanette and I were featured in a beautiful book called Collective Wisdom by Grace Bonney, which spotlights intergenerational friendships and life advice from women over the age of 50. After speaking with over 100 women for the book, Bonney reflects that “while age brings wisdom, it rarely offers closure or perfection.” We’re all still evolving. We’re all still curious about ourselves and the world around us. That curiosity doesn’t expire with age.
The best kinds of friendships create a safe space for listening, sharing, and learning, but in an intergenerational friendship, it feels like unlocking another dimension. Almost like time traveling forward and back, weaving between decades, getting a glimpse into the future and remembering what it was like in the past. It’s a refreshing reminder that we’re all just figuring it out as we go, and very little in life is actually linear.
In our interview for the book, Jeanette said I changed the way she approaches young people about gardening. “I’ve learned from how Erin just walks up and starts talking. There are young people I probably wouldn’t approach because I would expect them to not be receptive. But Erin doesn’t see it that way; she just moves forward.”
I was surprised to learn that I had taught her something, let alone almost the exact same thing she had taught me. That you’re never too old (or young) to make new friends, to put yourself out there, and to keep feeling those nervous butterflies, whether you’re meeting a new friend crush, or planting a new seed in hopes of watching it grow.
