friendship

Easy Like Sunday Morning

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Their feet almost touch as they make a diamond shape with their legs. Between them lies a baby boy with his tummy stuck to the carpeted floor, his legs kicking and gaining strength he will soon need when he learns to prop himself up. He holds a chew ring, linked to his lips with slobber that sags like a telephone wire. 
She’s facing him, rocking back and forth on chubby knees. A pink bow that is taped to her fine hair flops with her movements. She wants the chew toy he’s holding, but she can’t crawl. Yet.
“He was up for two hours in the night, just screaming,” one mother says to the other. “I think he’s teething.”

Nervous, because he’s always nervous now, he checks the perimeter for the 6th time. He knows, he’s been counting everything since he sat down. Two bodies by the water fountain, four on the swing set and sitting on the bench at twelve o’clock, one on the slide, one next to him. He can’t stop the way his shoulders tense when a balloon busts or the uncomfortable vulnerability that he feels not holding a gun. 
“Do the night sweats go away?” he asks her, a fellow POW. 
“Eventually.”

The house is too quiet. With a creak she flips the lid of her hand lotion open but it’s not enough to fill the emptiness that claws for her. 
His arms are still warm from the shower when he puts his reading glasses over his nose and tucks himself into the sheets.
She keeps reading, and rereading because her mind can’t take in the words. 
He cracks his knuckles while not wavering his gaze from the black and white of a pig-tailed toddler.
She turns her head to him. “I’m scared. I miss her so much I want to die.” 
He squeezes her hand. 

They serve the best tuna on rye in a hundred mile radius and he’s been eating lunch there since Reagan was in office. He goes to the same diner when the snow is piled in the corners of the windows, when trends are changing, when good years are good and bad years mold his character. He’s dusty, and hungry when he walks in with corn kernels stuck to his soles. 
“Fields are ready,” he tells his father on the stool next him. The man who taught him weather patterns and gut instincts about soil. Who could sow perfect rows of stalks in his sleep.

I spent time today with someone I just met. We share similar backgrounds, have lived parallel stories, and our life stages are growing at the same pace. Our kids are nearly the same ages, and we’ve both been married over a decade.
It’s amidst the banter of baristas in green aprons, beans clanking and grinding, steam frothing, that we find each other in conversation that doesn’t need explanation. At least not beyond our own need to give a voice to our lives. That easy place where you know the one you’re with gets you, because they’ve been there. A connection with what is not said, as much as with what is said.

I love that place.

 

 

I’m a Buffoon

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All I could think in those moments when my name would be written on the board was, my cheeks are saying more than I ever would out loud. I hate that scene from grade school when I would be called out. There was no dunce hat on a stool in the corner, but it sure felt like it. My friends, my crushes, my nemeses were all inwardly raising their eyebrows at the mention of those syllables my parents gave me at birth. It’s her, I imagine them uttering. Gah! The shame.

The same flush happens every time I stumble upon one of those lists. You know the ones: 100 things to never say to a bearded woman; 15 things to avoid saying to someone who’s just been bit by rabid monkeys; 5 ways to encourage a friend who has decided to live solitary in the woods for two years. All right, not quite like those but I think you get the picture. Every time I see one I fight the urge to raise my hand in a guilty plea of confession. It’s me, this list is going to expose all my ignorance.

Yep, nearly 10 times out of 10 I’ve said the wrong thing to a hurting person. If I haven’t said it, I’ve thought it. My only saving grace is that there might be more on the list I haven’t said than ones I have. I scour through the items doing a mental check.

I said that.
And that, but that one isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s true.
Oh. Oh dear. This one’s bad. I need to make a call, and offer my firstborn.

But can I take a second for us nincompoops? I get it. I’ve been through enough crises and traumatic events to know how grating the wrong comment, the total missed mark, the insensitive feels. It sucks. And I also know that on the other side, in the space where we come eye to eye with you who are in knee-buckling pain, we desperately want to go there with you. We want to see it, feel it, and come alongside you in it, even though it’s like we’re groping for a light switch in a dark room. With grief that can mold into different shapes at any given moment, with processes that are never alike in two people, it’s difficult to know what the exact right thing is at the exact right time.

I had a friend who was depressed. I’ve been there and I thought I knew what I was doing with her. I texted, invited, said I’d be there to talk it out because that’s what I have needed in those situations. More people. She, was the opposite. I actually Googled: How to Love Someone Who’s Depressed. It turns out she needed blankets wrapped over her head and groceries in her pantry without ever stepping into a store. She needed quiet and sleep and presence without any demand of words she didn’t have. 

So know, we buffoons who you want to slap, we care.

And at least we’re saying something, even if it’s the wrong thing. Teach us the language. Plus, you never know when someone might have great shaving tips.

 

My Pulse Tells The Story

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Odds are good that my neck was fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. I didn’t see it. I didn’t have to with the way my pulse rocked my body.

“Downstairs. Now.” I shoo everyone behind ushering hands and a controlled voice. The same one I use when one of the kids gets too close to a campfire or we are under a tornado warning. The one that says, listen up, this is important, I mean business.

“Why?” they ask at full attention.
“Because Dad is losing cookies he didn’t even eat. He’s sick.”

Someday we will sit around a fireplace with their future spouses in cable-knit sweaters holding spiced cider and they will be telling these stories. Mom was always walking around in rubber gloves, spraying bleach until we couldn’t breathe and in such a panic. I will laugh at myself, charmed at how they tease my silly ways. Because even now I know how ridiculous I am.

We were with friends a few nights ago. Count 4 adults and 7 kids and you know why we’re in this predicament.
I sent a text, “Little one has a fever, sorry.”
My girlfriend sent on back, “We have tummy issues, sorry.”
This is when my joints lock and I forget to breathe evenly. I try to remind myself that I will take the slime as it comes, if it comes. I vow not to monologue a series of what-if scenarios that will force me into a catatonic state. I shut my eyes and whisper, you can do this, and try to believe myself.

Instead, I did what any self-respecting phobic would do and slept head-to-toe next to my husband. Hey, at least I stayed in the room. But I wasn’t risking any midnight cough attacks in my direction that might warrant a bend over the toilet the next day. No.

Tired when I lay down, it wasn’t long before I was watching the moon edge its way over my pillow in a striped pattern through the blinds. Thoughts raced. And the more I tried to settle down the worse I got.

Calm yourself, muscles.
Balance out, breaths.
Trust Him, heart.
Do your magic, small round pill of heaven from my psychiatrist.

“The fear of this is much more paralyzing than the reality,” I said to Chase. I entertained the idea of just making myself vomit to prove it couldn’t kill me. And what is death? This is what the experts advise when I’m doing catastrophic thinking. “Go into it. Answer the ‘could’s’.” Well, then, it’s about two minutes of horrible and then it’s my favorite movies or a nap or a great book until the next two minutes of horrible. It will not do me in, though it will be uncomfortable. I will not die.  

“How’s the family?” I text today. “Long night?”

No survivors.

But something changes in the hope of my morning. While I consider isolating in an encapsulating, germ-repellant suit or living out my years in rubber gloves, I find hope.

Truth is, I’d rather be sick with a close friend, than sterile without one.

 

Why is it so dang hard sometimes?

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A little less hot, it still smells like rain when the bus pulls to the end of our street. McKenzie doesn’t see me, only her neighbor friend. Kyle looks at the ground as his shoes clunk down the black steps. His face is taut and I know he’s holding back. It isn’t until dinner that he finally breaks.

“No one sat by me on the bus.”

Like a lioness I crouch in protection. “Oh I’m sorry, Buddy.”

“Did you try to sit by someone?” asks Dad.

“Yeah. He moved away.”

His name. I want, his name.

“And then the bus driver yelled at me to sit down.” This, like a tree root that won’t stop, is all it takes to make him crack. Before I know it his daddy’s arms are around him.

My boy, the little one, he is tender-hearted. He loves full, and fierce.

School friendships are the cornerstone of our education. It is my unprofessional opinion, of course. But I’ve watched the way my children become fickle about learning, and it’s often based on how their relationships are going. When I think back to my own elementary career, I don’t think of those stacks of numbers I had to multiply or the words I read aloud when it was my turn. I think of how it felt to win dodge ball in front of everyone, of notebook paper with stupid drawings from my friend that would literally have me in stitches for an entire day.
Or my awful fourth grade year. There were three of us, which meant that somebody was always on the outs. “I’m friends with you again but don’t tell her.” “She’s so stuck up. I’m mad at her. Don’t, say, a word.” As you can guess I was often the her, the she. And I’m pretty sure I was the one saying it on several occasions.

It is hard to make good friends. It is hard to keep good friends.

And not much has changed. Sometimes by default. People move, grow in different directions, or just lose touch. It isn’t mean-spirited or intentional. It is life. Sometimes.

 I’ve had friends never return texts or e-mails. Just silence. I’ve been left with the lonely, one-sided wave while someone pretends not to see me in the parking lot. I’ve even had a friend move without a word.

It’s been said that women are relational, emotional. Women need other women. Really? Then why is it so dang hard sometimes?

So I rack over what I did, what I said. I think, “Ugh, am I clingy, needy, high maintenance, hypersensitive?” Probably. I’ve caught myself lately saying “If there’s room in your life…” Or, “Do you have time to hear this?” I’ve been burned, and in a culture that barely lifts its eyes from ten million devices, that must be unceasingly entertained and thus isolated, it isn’t easy. Have you walked through the airport lately? It is daunting. I’m guilty of it myself. 

But I want more. I want to do life with somebody. Lots of somebodies. I want a friend who can handle my ugly as well as my beauty. Who will share five dozen cookies with me in secret. I want to share a secret. I want someone who will walk barefoot on my floors to ransack my fridge because they are so at ease in my space.

I’m a pursuer, to a fault. I don’t let one unanswered text go lightly. (Five, OK I get the hint.) I fight. I lay myself vulnerable. I take the risk because it’s required if I’m going to have any real friendships. There are moments I’m left reeling after rejection (and then the 5 dozen cookies become all mine for enjoyment). I start to wonder why I keep trying. Why put myself out there at all?

Because dear Kyle boy, the world needs your kind of fierce. And it needs mine too.