F is for Friendships— The Company we Keep Along the Way

 Writing about friendships for the A to Z Blog Challenge shouldn’t be much of a challenge, says the woman who has only typed eleven words on the topic so far. Still, I can think of many sitcoms built entirely around friendships—Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory to name a few of my favorites. (That should tell you something about what I look for in a friend.) The characters in those shows are flawed and quirky, but sitcom writers don’t create them in a vacuum. They pull from real life and enlarge the flaws so we can’t miss the stereotypes we might meet in our own lives. Somewhere in my archives I even compared fellow residents in my continuum care community to Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha (Sex and the City.) I could easily do the same with the other shows.

Jess C. Scott wrote, “Friends are the family you choose,” and it would be hard to disagree. But since moving into my CCC, I’ve noticed how loosely some people use the word friend. I’ve been introduced that way by people who don’t know the first thing about me beyond the fact that I started the First Thursdays Desserts Only Club. If I were introducing someone here, I’d probably say, “This is so‑and‑so. She started the line dancing group,” or whatever fact I can tag the person with. Hearing “This is my friend, Jean,” never fails to make me wonder what makes us friends. If you don’t know a person’s last name, that’s an acquaintance in my book. But I suppose it would sound cold to introduce me to someone’s son or daughter with, “This is my acquaintance, Jean.” Not that I would care.

Experts say there are four types of friends: acquaintances, casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. I’d add situational friends—work friends, school friends, neighborhood friends. People we don’t see outside the bubble where we’re thrown together.

Verywellmind.com defines a good friend as “someone who respects your boundaries, supports you, and brings out the best in you.” I agree, and I’d add that a good friend is someone you can laugh with, cry with and trust with your secrets, knowing they’ll keep them in a vault. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lifelong friend since kindergarten, and I’m guessing that’s rare. Had she not moved 656 miles away after college and getting married, we probably would have driven our husbands nuts with our giggle‑fests. Distance changed the way we interacted, but not the fact that our roots are tangled from growing up within view of each other’s houses. After she married, we became avid pen pals. Then when cell phones came along, ending long‑distance charges, we kept in touch that Way. Recently, after her sons moved her into assisted living, Nancy asked them to bring her some stationery and stamps so she could write to me again. Everything old is new again.

A few years after Nancy was no longer part of my daily life, I met my husband, and Don took her place as my best, best friend. We were together for 42 years, so I’m calling him my half‑a‑life‑long friend. (Take it up with the management if you think that’s absurd.) We knew each other’s faults and strengths and supported each other through thick and thin—an overused phrase, but I can’t think of a more poetic way to describe our relationship. And with him came a group of neighborhood friends. We could laugh together over Saturday‑night pizzas, but sharing secrets or sensitive information? Not on your life. But on the surface, I suppose, we looked like I sitcom.

One reason I’ve always loved sitcoms built around a group of friends is because I could live vicariously through them. Only once in my life did I have a friendship circle like that. After my husband died and I was spending time at the senior hall, they held an event called “Looking for Friends,” or something similar—an event that, under different circumstances, would have falsely marked anyone attending as an apathetic loser. (Think teenagers with fragile egos.) But we were widows, and we started meeting for lunch, then movies—yada, yada, yada. We shared a sense of humor, laughed at the same throw‑away lines and could toss our own right back. Then Covid came along and nearly dealt a death blow to the group. As they say, friendships change over time, and even the good ones have expiration dates.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include another kind of friendship: the ones that grow across generations within a family. I’ve watched my two nieces become wonderful mothers and grandmothers. I’ve watched them grow into remarkable human beings. And I’ve been privileged to watch our relationships shift from niece‑and‑aunt to equal adults who are also friends. I’ve seen a few mother‑daughter duels that eventually make that same transition. It’s a wonderful kind of bond to have in one’s life.

Whatever form they take, friendships have a way of evolving right along with us. They change shape over the years, but they never stop shaping us. ©

Photo: The Gathering Girls trying to teach each other new tricks on our cell phones. 

E is for Education—and the Lessons That Stick

Using the letter E for the A to Z Blog Challenge was another hard choice for me, but I settled on writing about education. It fits with my overall theme of things that have shaped me. But then, can’t we all say that about our education, or lack thereof, to one degree or another?

My mom and dad never made it to high school, but they were both well educated in the ways the world works. Their generation were avid newspaper readers; my mom also read a lot of fiction. My dad was self‑taught, mechanical and could fix anything. That doesn’t sound all that impressive to the Google‑it generation, who can get how‑to directions or step‑by‑step videos for things Dad’s generation had to figure out by instinct, logic and trial and error.

In my generation, finishing high school was more the norm, and I did, but I’d be the first to admit I didn’t do all that well in school. In grade school I struggled with mild, undiagnosed dyslexia paired with being left‑handed in a school where a couple of teachers tried to change the latter or pronounced me “stupid” because of the former. Today schools don’t do that, and I’ll let AI explain why: “Forcing a left-handed child to use their right hand disrupts natural brain development, often causing emotional distress, academic confusion, and neurological stress. Common consequences include reduced coordination, stuttering, dyslexia-like issues, shyness, and lower self-esteem. Handedness is rooted in brain wiring, not just habit.”

I struggled with reading and had a hard time keeping up in classes that required keeping my nose in a book. Thankfully, I excelled at art, mechanical drawing, home ec and math, so my average got me accepted—probationally—into college. There, I had to take what we students called Dumbbell English.

Something happened that summer between high school and college. It was as if the two sides of my brain quit warring over control, and I aced both semesters of Dumbbell English. It might also be because the class gave us all a fresh start without the preconceived opinions of our intelligence or lack thereof. I’ve had two outstanding teachers in my life, and the woman who taught that course was one of them. I still have the worn and tattered books we used those semesters: Basic Composition and Clear and Correct Writing.

Note to my nieces: If you ever have to move me out of Independent Living and into Memory Care, make sure these books go with me. They’ve always been my benchmarks, reminding me that I’m not stupid or dumb—words no child should ever hear an adult, much less a teacher, label them.

One of the guys who lives in my building offered me a watercolor set of his wife’s shortly after she had to go to Memory Care. “She doesn’t use them,” he said. I told him to leave them in her room unless she asks him to take them away. “She’s been an artist her whole life,” I went on. “On her good days, she probably still thinks of herself as an artist, and seeing the watercolor set could help with that.” I’m a firm believer in keeping benchmarks around for people struggling to remember who they are.

The other outstanding teacher in my life taught a class called Women in Transition that I took twenty‑three years later. It was a required, no‑credit course for—yes—older women going back to college to finish their degrees. Had I stayed in college back in the ’60s, it would have taken only a year to graduate, assuming I didn’t flunk out, which was a possibility given the fact that I had left all the heavy‑reading courses for my senior year and was still struggling with the slow-reader bugaboo. But between the ’60s and the ’80s they added a bunch more required classes, so it took me two years to finally graduate. The day I walked across the stage to get my diploma was one of the top two happiest days of my life.

If you want to hear about the other happiest day, you’ll have to come back on the 9th, when the letter H will be my muse. And no, it’s not about my wedding day. ©

 

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D is for Dogs—Love, Loss, and All the Pawprints Between

 

Dogs, Dad, Don or dyslexia. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. What should I write about for the letter D in the April A to Z Blog Challenge? Since my theme this month is “The humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world,” I could cheat and pick all four—Dad for the humans (the best person I’ve ever known), Don for habits (he chain‑smoked three packs a day and I’ve got stories), dogs for the joys, and dyslexia for the heartaches that followed me far beyond school. But if I start cheating this early, by the time I get to K the Challenge Police might kick me off the spreadsheet that tracks how often we comment on other bloggers. As I understand it, that’s half the point of this yearly event—discovering new blogging voices. So welcome if you’re new here, and if you’re a long‑time reader, thank you for sticking around.

I’m choosing Dogs for my D topic because most of you don’t know that back when blogging was at its height, I kept a blog in a large dog‑blog community—large as in roughly 700 dog lovers. Most of us wrote in our dog’s voice. I loved it. My dogs could say things I couldn’t, or add a humorous twist to the antics all dog parents recognize.

Here’s something Levi “wrote” in The Levi and Cooper Chronicles when he was a puppy: “Wednesday me found Moomie’s boobie hammock hanging in the bathroom. Levi is smart. Me figured out how to get it off the hook and mes turned it into pull‑toy for my stuffie, Mr. Goose. He was having so much fun riding through the living room and Daady was having fun watching us until Moomie came along. End of fun. End of Daddy, Mr. Goose and Levi being happy.”

Six years later, Levi had learned proper pronouns but not how to soften a blow: “Something happened I want to share with the world because it hurts so much. My daady died! My human daady died and I’m so worried because he went to the Rainbow Bridge without his wheelchair. He needs that chair and Moomie just took it to a place called Goodwill. If they really have good will they’d bring it back and bawl my moomie out for leaving it there.”

In this blog alone I’ve written seven posts dedicated to the dogs in my life, and there are countless others where they wander in and out of the narrative. They’ve been shaping me since the beginning—from Blackie, the puppy who shared my playpen and grew into my babysitter and protector, to Levi, my last dog, who died just before I moved into Independent Living nearly five years ago. They’ve been confidants, companions and stand‑ins for the babies I never had. They’ve made me laugh, cry, brag and shamelessly use them for blog fodder. I worried over them, cleaned up after them, and I was, admittedly, a helicopter pet parent.

Don, my husband, spoiled them in the classic good‑cop way, while I was the bad cop in charge of training them to be good citizens and housemates. I loved him all the more for the way he treated my poodles. Before we were married, I gave him a document proclaiming him to be 49¾% owner of Cooper, and you’d have thought I’d handed him the keys to a mansion. On his birthdays and Father’s Days, “Cooper” would tape a quarter inside a greeting card and deliver the cards mouth to hand. When I was cleaning out my husband’s stuff during a move I discovered that he’d kept all those cards and quarters. They were the same quarters Don had dropped into Cooper’s piggy bank every time I let him take the dog along while he plowed snow. They were crazy about each other.

John Steinbeck once wrote, “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” Most dog parents know that look. They judge us, and sometimes we come up short. But we also know their look of pure devotion, and the one they use when they’re trying to sweet‑talk us into shelling out a treat.

I miss having that co‑dependent relationship in my life. Truth be told, I probably needed my dogs more than they ever needed me.

And that’s my wrap for the letter D. ©

Photo at the top: Levi, the only Schnauzer I ever had. The rest of the dogs in my adult life were poodles (3). In childhood we had collie and two Belgium Shepherds and one dog of questionable breeding.