Friends are like daffodils

The delight of reconnecting after a pause

While wrestling with the decision about whether to stay or leave London last year, I decided to visit the picturesque town of Hebden Bridge for some quiet contemplation.

After settling into my accommodation, I went for a stroll into town to browse antique stores and vintage bazaars. It was there that I spotted a familiar clothing tag—the label of the vintage brand my friend Emma started in Melbourne a decade earlier. It couldn’t be the same, could it?

Emma and I met on the dance floor at Cherry Bar on AC/DC Lane in our twenties and went from admiring each other’s 60s dresses to becoming fast friends. Over the years, we’d lost touch, but she was originally from Blackpool, so perhaps she was back in the UK?

As I continued to wander through the cobbled, canal-lined streets, I thought about why we had drifted apart. But there wasn’t a definitive reason. And that’s the thing about connection—it ebbs and flows.

My mum has a saying, “Friends are like daffodils, they can pop up where you least expect.”

This reminder has brought me comfort when I’ve felt someone pulling away, and also served as a helpful frame for my own need to be like a bulb underground at times.

The shifts we experience in our social lives are not necessarily personal. Friendship ebbs and flows because our lives ebb and flow. We get busy with other things, we meet other people, we change jobs or move cities, we meet someone, we experience a health scare, we start a family, we pick up a new hobby. We are always in flux.

Even our enthusiasm, as I wrote about in my previous essay, can wax and wane.

Learning to hold connections lightly means we can enjoy them when they do pop back up.

After having a cup of tea in a quaint cafe, I made my way to a yoga class. It was already dark, and the Christmas twinkle lights were on when I saw a couple walking their dog. Admiring the woman’s gorgeous vintage coat, I did a double-take—it was Emma. It took a moment for her to register who I was, and then we alternated between hugging and staring at each other in disbelief.

What are you doing here? What are you doing here?

We were two daffodils, popping up.

At dinner the next day, Emma and I exchanged details from the last decade. There was an ease to our conversation, a rapport, the thread of friendship easily picked back up. It was like no time had passed at all.

Emma couldn’t remember how we’d lost touch either. We talked about how we both just got busy with different things and had diverging interests and schedules.

The details didn’t matter. Instead, the delight of our paths crossing again on the other side of the world was too dazzling a thing not to appreciate.

After this serendipitous encounter, I thought more about friendship pauses.

Sometimes they come from a natural drift, but other times there can be a mismatch in needs, life stages or enthusiasm.

I wondered how we can approach resuming various friendships. As magical as it was to see Emma randomly, perhaps we don’t always have to wait for serendipity.

Too often, we hesitate to reach out to people because we feel bad that we haven’t kept in touch.

I often hear that someone feels so bad about not replying to a text message promptly that they don’t end up sending one at all.

But I’m sure many people would prefer to get a late message, or a short reply, or a random invitation, than nothing at all. People are more keen to see you, hear from you, and be with you than you might realise.

Daffodils pop up randomly, but sometimes we find them right where we left them.

When I was in Europe, I thought about my friend Anne-Laure whom I hadn’t seen for five years. After reaching out to say hello, I ended up staying with her in a tiny village in France for three months. It was like no time had passed.

Then there was a time I overheard a charming Irish man bantering with the barista, and I thought about Kevin, another charming Irish man I’d befriended in Canada fifteen years ago. I tracked down his number, and after some brief texting, he invited me to his Halloween party in Barcelona the following week. I decided to go, and we spent the first night chatting on his couch for hours. It was like no time had passed.

When it comes to resuming friendships, being in a certain part of the world can be a prompt, another person can be a reminder, and even a stage of life can be a nudge to reach back out to someone.

As the saying goes, friends can be for a season, a reason, or a lifetime—and what I’d add is that the very same friend can be all three across our lives. We might have a friend who is an integral part of our youth whom we lose touch with for decades, but then bump into and resume things anew.

Sometimes we find daffodils; sometimes we are the daffodils. Either way, perhaps one of life’s greatest delights is resuming a friendship after a pause and feeling like no time has passed at all.

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Many thanks to editor Susie Thatcher of

Mysterious Realm

for your keen eye on the draft.

For more of my writing, you can peruse the archive and explore my newsletter, On Things.

With fondness & friendship,
Madeleine