8 posts tagged “friendship”
Yesterday, after Max's karate class, a quick breakfast and sweep up of the kitchen, Max and I tumbled into our car and drove 40 minutes to the airport. We were early. We checked the monitors with wild anticipation and staked out good seats right by the door where the arriving passengers enter. Max ran back and forth and checked the arrival stats every five minutes--He came back triumphant at last. "Mommy" he squealed with joy "Its arrived!". Five minutes later my dear dear Erica and her oldest daughter Olivia were walking through the doors into our our arms as tears welled up in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. We hugged for what seemed like an eternity. A piece of my heart lives with Erica. It was nice to feel it close.
We have been friends since we were four.
It was sometime in kindergarden when she slipped her arm through mine and we whispered to each other that we would be friends forever. We meant it. Our friendship quickly turned into something that would forever cement our whole families into one.
She lived just up the street from me--a 2 minute bike ride away. My bus stop was at the end of her road--Huckleberry Lane. Her house was just a quick stop off on the way into town on a hot summer day. Our mothers carpooled us to religous ed, drama class, dance class. We played for hours in each others backyards. Many a Friday night our families dined together. The grownups then retired to the living room for a cocktail while we hid away in her bedroom listening to Billy Joel records, whispering our fears to each other. We gave each other nicknames and practiced our dance moves.
When we got to middle and high school, Erica was considered a cool kid. She was pretty and athletic and hung out with all the jocks. I was considered a nice kid, a smart kid, but I hung with another slightly less in-crowd. No matter, Erica included me and brought me along, refusing to buy into the nonsense of silly cliques. She even introduced me to my first serious boyfriend, a dreamy Canadian hockey player with blond hair and a sweet smile, someone who was part of her gang.
The summer we turned twelve our families started vacationing together every summer, something we would continue to do all the way through college. We laid on the beaches all day working on our tans and then wandered the beaches at night looking for boys.
When my parents went out of town, I slept at her house. It was on one such weekend that we both got in trouble with the police--being at a keg party when we should have been at the movies. We both spent a lot of time in the church youth group after that.
She visited me at college whenever her school's hockey team played ours. We stayed up all night whispering confessions to each other and never once uttered a word of judgement.
Together we have been through three marriages and two divorces. I held her after her dad died, borrowing a friends car to drive up and be there for the funeral. Between us we have birthed 4 children.
When I sat and cried with a screaming infant on my lap, she consoled me for hours. When the newness of motherhood got to be too much for me to take, she left her daughter with her husband and boarded a train. She helped me give Max his first bath and she did my laundry. When she was on bed rest for five months with her twins I called her almost every morning on my way into work to check in on her. Max and her children have grown close despite the 300 miles between our homes. We try to see them for at least an afternoon a couple times a year. On one such recent visit, these four wee ones (ages 5,6 and 7) linked arms themselves and whispered to that they too will be friends forever.
But those visits never seem to be enough for Erica and I. There are mouths to feed, boo-boos to kiss, hurts to sort out. Neither of us is really able to finish a thought. Little ears are always listening
Every couple of months, the phone will ring at 9 pm. "Are they asleep?" we whisper to each other referring to our children. If they are, we then settle in and start to talk. It will be hours before we get off the phone, bleary eyed and yet we still feel there is so so much more to say. Hanging up feels like a betrayal.
Erica has a heart so big and wide open. Her generousity knows no bounds. She is beloved and needed by everyone. I see in her face how she is so tired from her constant giving--she doesn't complain as she reaches down into her last bit of energy to give it to someone else. I want to wrap her in my arms and protect her from the world which doesn't know how lucky it is that she is in it. She is one of my heros.
This summer was the first year since we were twelve that we didn't sit on the beach in Rhode Island together for at least one afternoon. My heart has been aching ever since.
So Erica invented a new tradition. She realized we needed more time for late night whispering. While we craved two weeks away on a beach somewhere, we both knew that this thing called life meant we could not do it anytime soon. So she decided that she would bring each of her children down for an overnight visit. Each child would get one-on-one time with Max--and leave us to huddle together and talk. No men, no sibling rivalry to sort out. Just quality time, wine and chocolate. And so, yesterday she arrived for the first of these visits.
We wandered through downtown yesterday, Max showing off our little community to Olivia. We walked into the movie rental place and I told her a long and complicated story while the kids picked out a video. She looked at me with a wry smile on her face and interrupted me. "So essentially what you are telling me is this..." and then went on to sum up in 10 words or less a secret held so deep within my heart I had not dare say it outloud to anyone not even myself. After 34 years she can not only read my mind, she can read my heart. And she does it without an ounce of judgement.
Today when it was time to return them to the airport, her daughter lay on the floor by the door and cried. "I don't want to leave" she sobbed. I wanted to join her begging Erica not to go. I wanted to lay my body across the door and hold on to her ankles. I thought to myself, "Livie and I could take her..." But after all these years I know she will be back so I decided to instead support Erica as a parent and I picked up my keys and loaded the car, holding Livia by the hand. It was all I could do to leave them at security. Max and I secretly prayed that they would miss their flight and have to come home for and live with us "for a million years" or at least one more night.
They are home now, safe and sound. Back in their lives as we are back into ours. I will see her at Thanksgiving. We will drink coffee while the kids run wild. It won't be enough time. It never is.
And when it is time to get in the car, I will slip my arm through hers, rest my head on her shoulder and whisper to her that we will be friends forever. And I will count myself among the lucky for the gift of a true old friend.
Why is it that very few 30-something women I know have real good guy friends? Not guys who are married to our girlfriends, or our husbands' buddies who hang out at the house but real friends. Guys who share interests and passions. Who we connect with and enjoy just as much as our very best girlfriends. Guys who we have a relationship with that is independent of our spouses or partners.
Is it just me who is missing this?
When I was in college, I had a bunch of male friends. In fact it was my gang of guy friends with whom I often felt most myself. Whether it was staying up in the pub arguing about politics, hanging out listening to music in the dorm, whispering across a table in the library, or brewing beer, I felt truly at home with my male buddies, accepted in a basic earthier way. While I put on my best face for all but a few of the girls I knew, with the guys it was always a little bit more real. I let down my hair with them. With them I felt I could really live in the moment and not be judged.
I relished being around their differentness. They had a fresh (although sometimes simpler) perspective on the world--a perspective I often found to be just what I needed to get out of my rut. They taught me to love the game of hockey (or football or baseball depending on the season), David Letterman and Martin Scorsese. They taught me to mix drinks and play raquetball. In their ruthless world of jokiness I learned to hold my own, push back, sharpen my ironic wit.
Those guy friends of mine were able to immediately weed out the jerks I was dating and didnt dance around, trying to be polite about it either. And when I didn't listen to their advice, they were able to hold me and let me cry in a way my girlfriends never quite could.
But now in this phase of my life, all that is changed. I have noticed that the only time I am socializing with manfriends is when I am getting together with couples. The only men in my social life are girlfriends's husbands. If I am not surrounded by his-and-her pairs then it is because it is ladies night out, an evening with a girlfriend or two. I don't really have deep independent friendships with men.
Partly this is because I have happily, yes, I have grown into mature female friendships. Friendships based on the shared bonds of mothering, of nurturing or of hitting/breaking through the glass ceiling. These are now the friendships that nurture my soul. I am blessed to be surrounded by a community of wise and interesting women with whom I connect at a deep level. I wouldn't trade this beautiful female connectedness for all the beer in Wisconsin. But I have to admit, I kinda miss having close friendships with men.
This really hit me the other night when my dear friend Jackie and I ended up kicking back with some neighbors. She and I had planned on just having a glass of wine on her front porch but we had been spontaneously invited into the end of a dinner party just down the road. One by one various spouses peeled off exhausted and we were left sitting up in the backyard with just a couple of the guys. We stayed up late in the night talking about guitars, music and dogs, marriage and raising kids, local politics and why hockey might possibly be the best sport ever. Something old and comfortable from my past bubbled up to the surface and I felt nostalgic for my old male friendships.
And I found myself wondering...why is it that so many of us fall into purely same-sex friendships during these childbearing years? Is it truly because we identify so strongly with the experience of other women? Is it because the possibility of a deep connected relationship with someone of the opposite sex who is not our partner feels somehow disloyal or maybe just a tad strange? Do we avoid these friendships because of a taboo or because we really don't have much in common anymore?
I found myself wondering...when and why do we let our friendships go? Is it because in the blissful period of our relationships with our partners that we no longer feel a need for that kind of connectedness? Is it simply more convenient and easy to socialize as partners? To segregate by sex?
At this point in my life, I long to have a few good guy friends back. As a single mom with a boy, I need someone to help translate his seemily odd behavior to me. I don't want to count on men that I am dating to help me through the magical world of boys--to help me find little league teams--and give me advice on teenage boys. In fact as I begin to think about dating I want to keep that part of my life separate from my life as a parent. Perhaps it is because I am starting to consider venturing into the scary world of dating that I long to have the safe haven of platonic friendship as a touchpoint. A pal to hang around with with none of the drama of sex attached. But I dont think it is that alone.
I wonder, am I the only gal in town who finds herself looking for Mr. Good Friend?
Last night I got a letter from Anne.
I heart real letters. Not all letters-just the ones that I get in my mailbox from someone who doesn't want money from me. From someone who actually has news or something wise to say. From someone who is thinking of me.
There is something about actually holding a piece of paper, the heft of it adding weight to the importance of the communication. The permanence of it.
I relish the fact that the letter was once actually held in the hands of the person writing to me. The author's joy, sadness, boredom, yearning all imprinted into the paper like little energy fingerprints. I love that a dear one put it in an envelope and selected a stamp, walked to a mailbox and remembered to send it off and that ultimately some kind mailcarrier placed it in a pile just for me. A long chain of tiny acts of deliberate intention.
I appreciate all the clues on a letter that set the prose into context. The coffee stain on the back that tells me it was morning (or maybe late at night) when the thoughts tumbled out...the handwriting so small and intense or loopy and hopeful, the bored doodles in the margins. A series of crossed out thoughts that reveal a distracted mind. Are those tears that smudged the ink? Sometimes the paper is smooth and perfect--the letter carefully written with no mistakes. A finished product with a rough draft crumbled up in the trash. Perhaps if I am lucky I can catch a whiff of familiar perfume.
You can take email, with its showy instantaneousness. I'll take a letter any day.
Last December I was cleaning out a closet in the room that is now my office. It's what a real estate agent might call a bonus closet--the deep dark extra closet that becomes a catch all for life's baggage. Ten years ago when we moved into this house I used it as a place to park the countless boxes of memoirs I have dragged around with me all my life. After so many years, so little attention, and a new-found disdain for clutter, I tackled the closet expecting to be able to throw away whole piles quite quickly. Instead I found myself seated in the midde of the room surrounded by pages of others' lives captured in pen--secret confessions, mundane news whispered to me on paper. There was the card, scribbled quickly with a bright colored pen to ease the loneliness of life after college, the long letter from a friend in the Navy--out to sea and pensive. The newsy letters from girlfriends, recounting dates gone bad, weekend plans and new jobs, new homes, new love.
And among all these gems, some written over 20 years ago, was a long letter full of poetry. It was from the guy I had dated the summer between my freshman and sophmore years of college, a summer that was purely magical - a bridge between innocence and maturity. That summer was a time before I knew about real heartache and crushed dreams, when life seemed like one long infinite stretch of nothing but possibility. I was head over heels not only with him but with life and all that the future could hold. We kept in touch for a few months once back in school, before life took us in different directions. His letters were some of the best I ever received.
Holding that paper in my hands again, rereading those bold, sweet, vulnerable words only a 19 year old could pen, my heart sang just as it had half a lifetime away. For a brief moment I was back sitting on the floor of the hallway of my dorm, reading those words for the first time, all giddy and sparkly.
I have to admit that this January I carried that particular letter around with me for a couple of days tucked safely into my notebook. The hopefulness and warmth that it represented to me seemed like a perfect talisman for the coming new year. When I was at last ready to put it down I pulled out a pen and some notebook paper and wrote him a long letter with blessings and warm wishes for his older, less innocent, self and the family that I was sure he must have. I googled him and found an address for his oncology practice, put a stamp on it and sent it on its way. I giggled when I thought of the many different ways it could be received. Would he be shocked? Thrilled? Terrified? Call for a restraining order?
Last March, on a miserable dark night I went to my mailbox and pulled out the bills and circulars. I sifted through and found a heavy envelope, the handwriting eerily familiar but a return address I could not quite place. I went inside, made some tea and opened it curiously. It was a most lovely four page letter, handwritten on a legal pad, slightly torn at the top, a chronicle of 4 precious children, an amazing wife, a busy medical practice and happiness found in the midwest. The best kind of news...A shot of sunshine loaded with humor. His voice the same, just wiser. I couldn't have asked for a more glorious response. It too made me feel sparkly but in a grown-up, more settled and less naive kind of way.
Letters can do that in a way no other form of communication can.
Sure I enjoy the spontaneity of email--how it makes you feel so close to someone so far away. I appreciate the convenience of text messages too. And I have been known to spend a late night here or there whispering on the phone for hours, hearing the voice of someone who makes me smile.
But letters, letters are works of art.
I love letters.
Tonight is Boys Night at our house.
Alex, Julian and Max have been buddies since infanthood, sharing a babysitter, toys and their food. They fight and love each other fiercely. Like brothers. When Alex went off to Kindergarten, Max and Julian held hands and met him at the bus each day. When Julian joined Alex at the Spanish-immersion elementary school, Max waited patiently for that yellow bus to pull up for an hour of bliss each afternoon.
But now that school is out for the summer, they luxuriate in long sleepy days together under the watchful eye of their Nana. Building, running, climbing, hour after long hour wrapped up in imaginary play. Good hard physical boy play. Rolling on the ground, pretend fighting, all poopy jokes and pretend farts. And giggling. There is always lots of non-stop giggling. In the evenings it is hard to pull them apart.
So every now and again we don't. They will sleepover at one house or another. But our house has a special mystique--There are no big sisters here. Boys rule at our house. The will spend all night screeching with laughter, building blanket forts, and launching pillows at the mom at the computer and no one will roll their eyes or beg "MOM...make them stop!".
Tonight they wait at the door for me to arrive home from work like puppies, wagging their tails and begging for pizza. Please please PLEASE can we order pizza AND have a movie?!?. I pick up the phone and call for delivery. Who can resist making such dreams come true?
As I write this they tumble through the dining room at full speed. Strip off their clothes and pull on pajamas, and then explode back downstairs to finish the movie, pure joy and silliness. I want to bottle their laughter.
And tonight, when the movie is done they will curl up like the puppies that they are, together in each others arms in a big pile in the living room. Sweet sweet boys.
Some days its not all bliss with these three. There are hurt feelings, hurt limbs. But usually compassion rules the day. When one of them gets hurt, the other two run for ice. When there is only one icecream sandwich left, Max and Alex let Julian have it because "We know he loves them SO MUCH."
I pray that they will always have each other these friends who knew each other before the Boy Code reared its ugly head, before society tried to convince them that they shouldn't cry in public, or express affection for one another. I pray that when the storms of adolescence rock their world that they will remember the security they felt on summer days falling down laughing and summer evenings falling into each others arms.
everyone I know read this post by Jen Lemen, picked something on it and did it by Saturday next. I think the world would shift in small but amazing ways...I double dog dare ya...
This is Max's new friend Holly. We met her in Ireland. They took one look at each other and were immediate fast friends--as though their whole short lives were leading up to this one moment. She runs like the wind and throws balls really really high. Like Max she can scale walls, poles, trees with ease and grace. After he met her in County Clare, the first words out of his mouth each morning were :"Mommy--is she coming over today?" He didn't even have to say her name. We both knew that SHE was Holly.
Holly speaks with a crisp British accent. While I warned the hiking children by saying "Hey kids--look out for those prickly thingies" she passed the message down the line by saying "Mind the thistles now". The mischief in her huge twinkling blue eyes I had expected to see on fairies only. No wonder Max loves her so.
Together the two of them played hard for four days straight until her family had to return to their home in the south of England. But when she left it was hard for me to believe that I hadn't known her her entire life.
She and Max brought out the adventurer in each other. They scaled walls, invented games, made art and explored. Over castles and fields, restaurants and city streets they lived again and again fully and completely in each and every moment. They suggested outlandish games and hid from the two year old. They occasionally had to take to separate corners--but mostly they tumbled along in sheer wonder and bliss.
Watching the love affair between them unfold I was envious. Such instant friendships do indeed seem the stuff of childhood. We adults are more guarded. We chat about nothing for awhile, circulating around each other suspiciously, asking questions that will tell us whether we can take a step closer. We protect our wounded hearts carefully - don't reveal too much--we know how easily it is to be hurt when we lead with a wide open heart. We know how hard goodbyes can be and find ourselves censoring ourselves--not wanting to commit our real selves to things that won't last.
But as I joined their gleeful romps, I found myself questioning that supposedly smart adult behavior. I marveled at how two children who dared to live completely without fear of loss were able to experience such utter joy. I found myself wanting to be like them.
Its amazing to me how as an adult I tend to look at new people through the lens of time: How long have I known them--How long they will be around. I warm up slowly, revealing little bits of my soul. Carefully and slowly unfurling my dreams and thoughts when I know it is safe. Its not been a bad strategy--I have made many wonderful friends this way. But I wonder about the missed chances to connect--the people who were only around a few days or weeks--the people I never let down my guard for and who consequently I will never see again. I wonder about the joy I might have missed while I was worried about protecting my wounded heart.
Because my wise young son dared lead with a wide open heart we now have new friends. Holly and her family are coming to the US for a visit next year. She and Max have planned to take a ride in Uncle Sean's police car and go to Grandma's house on the beach. They will marvel at skyscrapers in NY and look for sea shells. Perhaps it will end there. Or maybe it will continue with subsequent visits to the UK. In some ways what the future holds is not important--we have already gained so much from knowing them.
And me, I have decided to emulate the girl with the fairy-like eyes and the boy with green socks. I have vowed to take chances with new folks. To let my kookiness shine with strangers. I still think I will protect pieces of myself from people who clearly don't get me but I will channel Max and Holly when I find myself censoring for all the wrong reasons. I will welcome each stranger with a wide open heart.
Yesterday my friend Nick and his lovely wife Kate stopped by for a quick tour of the neighborhood. I have been on a campaign to get them to move to our neck of the woods. Its been unrelenting really and a bit over the top. But missions are missions...
Nick is work friend--and a relatively new one at that. I have lately tried to make real distinctions and firm boundaries between my work and private life. But Nick is one of those rare exceptions. He deals with me in a way that is completely and utterly accepting. He and his wife seem to me to be the kind of people that you want to live right around the corner, close enough to walk there in the span of time it takes to make a drink. Spontaneous and warm. The kind of people who would walk in your back door without knocking when they need something from your cupboard. Who step over the clutter without blinking an eye. People you could invite for dinner just as you are throwing the food on the table.
And it if for this reason that they must live here in our community--be part of our tribe--this ever expanding group of people bound together by the strings of everyday life and a thousand tiny acts of kindness. We eat at each others tables, love each others children, weed each others gardens and occasionally clean up each others messes.
Last night my friend Eric organized a potluck in the park. All evening people streamed through carrying yummy healthy food. Children rolled in dirt and were scolded for wandering off too far. When Max fell on the pavement there were at least 5 grownups he consulted to share his pain.
And for every person I saw that I knew and loved, I met two more people.
I had been worried about the whole school thing because I feared secretly that I would lose part of my community if Max didn't go to school with a certain group of kids. But now, I see how silly that really is.
I belong to a tribe--not a cliche. While cliches contract and are quick to exclude based on a finite list shared experiences, tribes expand in all directions and delight in new connections, new reasons to stop by, new friends to welcome. The tribe I belong to won't change--it will grow. And me, I'll grow with it.
Today is May 4, the day my dear friend Anne was born. Break out the fireworks people--its practically a national holiday in my book.
I feel truly blessed to have a friend like her. I honestly believe that this world would be a little bit more sane if only everyone knew and listened to Annie. Here are just a few of the millions of reasons why I love her so.
Anne wraps up chocolate bars, tea bags, soap and hair clips in very pretty paper and sends them priority mail to mark special events.
When Maxidoodle went through his jigsaw puzzle phase she wrote him letters on blank puzzles and sent them in the mail all broken up.
She calls to reminds me when it is free cone day at Ben and Jerry's.
When Juan left me, Anne planned a trip to fly down from Boston by herself with an infant in tow. She planned it two weeks out so that I would have something to look forward to. Knowing she was coming allowed me to put one foot in front of the other during those lonely two weeks.
Anne is the strongest person I know. Six weeks after the death of her infant son she held my newborn and told me he was beautiful.
Anne was my first grown-up friend who "got me"--took me for face value without an ounce of judgement. No matter how kooky I am it doesn't phase her--she understands.
Anne has known me at my most irresponsible, my most childish, my most hateful, my most selfish and my saddest hours and has continued to love me without a second thought.
Anne is never afraid to ask questions. Her curiousity about the smallest of details delights me. For nearly twenty years she has forced me to slow down and really look and attempt to answer why.
Anne is honest with herself about her feelings, no matter how ugly or scary they may be. She expects the same of me too.
She writes letters longhand.
Anne knows how to laugh. She and I can laugh for hours. Her laughter is like music to me--a deep Buddha like sound. A prayer. We laugh about everything--the hysterically funny, the absurd, the joyful and the sad.
She knows where all the good bargains are. She shares that information with me.
She sang"Me and Bobby McGee" to a packed house and would have made Janis herself proud.
She uses perfect grammar. I don't and she never ever makes me feel bad about it.
She listens with a big wide open compassionate heart to everyone she talks to.
She has tutored adults who don't know how to read.
She goes to dances with her uncle-in-law Leo.
She taught me about Trader Joes, rooibus tea, non-toxic cleaning products, Garcia-Marquez, Madrid, Irish immigration French cooking, copper pots and countless other topics.
She has spent hours with me wandering around bookstores.
She loves the library and the beach and The New Yorker and Brainchild Magazine as much as I do.
She says "I love you" without fear.
Annie with her precious daughter Isabel two years ago on a rescue mission to Maryland.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNIE! May your year be full of abundance and joy!
