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 On Friendship

by Julia Sneden

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. — W.H. Auden

“Friends are Band-Aids on life’s wounds,” a friend of mine once said. Everyone within hearing groaned because it sounded so corny, but the older I’ve gotten, the happier I am to lean toward corniness. A life without friends wouldn’t be much of a life.

Recently, I received a letter from a chum who bemoaned the death of the last high school classmate with whom she had kept contact. “There’s no one left who knows how it was,” she wrote, “no one who remembers the teachers or the dances or the ball games or the drive-in where the carhop wore roller skates … no one who remembers which kids were going together, or the crazy things Jake, the class clown, did that made even the teachers laugh.”

Having moved nearly 3000 miles away from my high school roots, I could relate to her complaint. Time and distance ensure that my oldest friends and I keep up with one another only sporadically. When I went back to my 50 th high school reunion, however, I was delighted to find that the friends I knew back then still recognized me. We re-connected with delighted hugs and tender, laughing memories of our young selves — at least most of us did. The few who were never my close friends still weren’t, which, I expect, suited us both just fine.

Over the years, I have been blessed with a lot of friends, at times discovered swiftly, at other times uncovered slowly. There were a few instant friends, where a sort of blazing recognition happened immediately when we met and within a few moments knew each other for kindred souls. There were also a few people who turned me off almost immediately, but whom I later came to appreciate. They made me aware of how foolish snap judgments can be.

I’m blessed with a couple of friends who push boundaries, friends who impulsively say things like: “I feel like doing something crazy,” and then entice me to join in. Think changing hair color or climbing a mountain or signing up for Salsa dancing every Thursday night. These are friends to giggle with, even if I’m chicken to go along for the ride. I admire their bravura.

There’s also the friend who knows the right things to say when I’m overworked or hurt or feeling down. She just knows how to make me feel better about things, first of all about myself.

And then there’s the friend who knew me when, the friend whose presence reaches so far back into my life that I remember the day she lost her first front baby tooth, and she remembers the day I accidently set fire to my bangs when the two of us were in my closet, clandestinely smoking cigarettes purloined from my mother. She lives all the way across the country, and we haven’t spent more than a few days together, with a long span of years in between, since I left my native California forty-five years ago. But she remains my touchstone, my chum, the one who remembers the big trees (now gone) that surrounded our houses, and the names of the neighbors, and the way our “come home” bells sounded at dinner time. I can envision the inside of her house, and she can remember the inside of mine, including the crawl space underneath it, and the roof where we daringly sunbathed topless.

Nowadays, our interests and lifestyles are quite different. She is good at many things I am not, and I am good at a few things she is not. It’s unlikely we’d see all that much of each other even if we were within driving distance, because we both live busy lives. And yet an occasional card or phone call or email is enough to bring that childhood friendship and all its goodness flooding our hearts with shared memories.

I don’t have to do anything but say: “Make-out Mountain,” and the two of us collapse in laughter, remembering the time that Karen and “Causus Belli”* got their braces hooked together during a moment of wild teenage passion.

Having a friend who can share those long memories is a delight, but that history from my far past does not, of course, de-value the friends made during my adult years. Part of the wonder of friendships is their delicious variety.

One loves one’s friends willy-nilly, for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of conditions. And, I might add to my eternal and grateful joy, they love us right back.

*This translates as “the cause of war,” and is a reference to Caesar’s Account of the Gallic Wars in 2nd year Latin class. The boy’s last name was Bell, and he was the least warlike kid you could imagine. We didn’t take much seriously, in those days.

©2010 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

 

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