There was a time when keeping up meant knowing every detail: the same jokes, the same places, the whole account of an ordinary Tuesday. Later, a conversation might need a little catching up before it finds its old ease.
That change can feel like a distance neither person intended. A late reply becomes easy to misunderstand. Good news can be difficult to celebrate when we are quietly measuring our own progress against it.
Perhaps friendship asks something different of us then. We can be curious about a life that no longer resembles ours. We can ask what a change means to someone instead of deciding what it ought to mean.
Not every friendship keeps the same shape, and not every distance can be repaired. But different circumstances do not automatically make people strangers.
Sometimes staying close means leaving room for each other to become someone we are still getting to know.