The Nature of Friendships

My Gathering Girls group--seven of us who spun out selves off from an official, monthly event down at the senior hall for people looking for friends---has been meeting twice a month for brunch since last May. And occasionally we’ve gotten together to do other things around the community. I was worried we wouldn’t hold together over the winter because the weather here in Michigan puts a kink in everything we do and, sadly, our ages are also playing into the equation. One of our ladies has breathing issues and is resisting going on oxygen, another has back issues so these two often bow out of going places that requires a little walking. Another in our group is starting dialysis and doesn’t know how that’s going to affect her free-to-gather time and we have another who just this week joined the Widows’ World where the rest of us have been living for a long time.

The ladies mentioned above are on average ten years older than the three of us not mentioned. Once this winter it was just we ‘youngsters’ who showed up for brunch. And someone commented that our absence friends are a cautionary tale telling us that we need to keep moving, keep having fun together for as long as we can because when we see what they are going through with heath issues we are looking at ourselves in ten years. And since dark humor is often served at our brunches we joked about having to go back to the senior hall to troll for more friends to entice into our group if it gets too small. That led to a discussion about how friends come and go through-out our lives for various reasons---some moving on literally, other moving on metaphorically as we grow in different directions. “All our lives we’ve had to keep making new friends,” someone said. And that’s never easy to do whether in grade school or at the senior hall. 

I’ve been lucky that I’ve had two best friends in my life. One I met in kindergarten and we were best friends until she got married after college and moved out of state, but over the years we’ve stayed in touch first through letters and now with email. I must say, though, at one time I resented her husband for taking her away from me. I missed having a best friend in my life until Don came along and took on that role. Now, looking back I wonder if N.B. and I had lived in the same city all this time how that might have affected our relationships with our husbands. We taught each other how to be best friends and we transferred what we learned to being best friends with our spouses. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think it’s possible to have two best friends at the same time. And a spouse will usually (and rightly so) come first because you’re building a family and life together. I say “usually” because I’ve known a few women who have giggled, cried, plotted, and passed more secrets back and forth with their girlfriends than with their spouses. I’m guessing their marriages weren’t all they could have been because, in my book, spouses who are best friends have the best marriages. Still, no one can be everything to another person so I may be wrong about the ability of people to maintain two best friends at the same time. Oh, I’m so confused! The only thing I know for sure is I ignored the whole issues of maintaining a circle of friends until the loneliness of widowhood drove me to face the fact that I screwed up in thinking I’d never need more than Don. Oops. 

The word ‘friend’ is hard to define without an adjective, isn’t it. We pigeonhole friendships. We have casual friends, work friends, fair weather friends, cyber friends, church friends, common interest friends, family friends, close friends and best friends but what is a friend really? A best friend is easiest to define: it’s a connection that binds our spirits together, an unbreakable trust that we can be ourselves around that person, no matter if our moods are joyful or pitiful. Best friends can talk about anything and trust one another not to past on anything personal or told in confidence. They know where all our bones are buried, know our strengths and weaknesses and they only use that knowledge to help us be the best version of ourselves. 

Monday was my Gathering Girls First Mondays Brunch and only four of the seven of us attended. That makes me so nervous! I don’t want our circle of budding friendships to break up or get smaller before we even get to our first anniversary. And the TED TALK below with life-long friends Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin on the nature of female friendship inspires me to keep trying to building our sisterhood group. Their humor, like that of my Gathering Girls, comes together like peanut butter and jelly---so natural and easy---and I don’t want to lose that! O. Henry said, "No friendship is an accident” which is probably another way of saying, we have to work at maintaining our friendships. Okay, that’s my summer marching orders. Again. It was the same last summer and look what I’ve gained in the trying...and how much more I can gain if I keep on trying! ©

Book Talk, Texting Dogs and Five times Married

Thursday when I got home from being away from the house all afternoon I felt like taking a nap, but I toughed it out hoping I could get through until bedtime without falling asleep during The Big Bang or Young Sheldon, the highlights of my weekly TV viewing. Plus my cleaning girl was due the next morning and I had to get ready for her. I don’t “clean” before she comes as much as I “hide” things that I call too tempting to pass up should she develop a case of sticky fingers---my purse, cell phone, Kindle Fire, prescription drugs, house keys, jewelry, and mail with sensitive information inside. I trust her but sometimes the service has last minute substitutes. Better to be safe than sorry.

That afternoon I had gone to a lecture and while I was sitting there I got a text message from Levi, my dog, saying it was time to give him his monthly meds. Levi is smart but his toes are too big to text and it took me a few minutes to remember I’d programmed that in my Kindle Fire’s calendar app and it must have gotten populated across all my devices and somehow that ended up in an auto text. The lecturer was a woman from the library with the title of ‘Adult Paraprofessional.’ I have no idea what that is but she’s an energetic and dramatic storyteller and she talked about fifteen books and their authors, with the common thread of all being books that have won prestigious awards. I hadn’t read a single one of them. 

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry was on the list which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone but the book that holds the all-time record for winning the most awards is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susan Clarke---seven awards in all. It’s set in the 19^th century and is about dueling magicians. It sounds as boring as dish water to me, but the librarian claims it’s a fun read. Another book, one with a strange concept won the 2017 Booker Prize and it's titled, Lincoln in Bardo by George Saunders. It has 166 characters, all ghosts, and the entire book takes place in one night in a cemetery---the night President Lincoln spent the night sitting by his eleven year son’s casket. He really did do that but the rest, of course, is fiction. The book has been compared to the Our Town and the librarian claims it’s a hoot to listen to in the audio version. I will pass. But I will put News of the World by Paulette Jiles on my want list. It's about a crusty old guy after the Civil War who makes his living going from town to town reading the news from back East and who agrees to deliver a mute little girl across several states to Texas. The librarian called it "sweet, fun and heart-warming."

Other books she talked about were: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Full of allegories and mythology but it also works as a straight on thriller; The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, an oral history of the dust storms in the Great Plains during the depression. We were all shocked to hear the soil from those storms made it all the way to New York City and onto ships 350 miles out at sea; Little Fires Everywhere by Celese Ng won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award, the only award that is nominated and voted on by readers; Evicted by Matthew Desmond about poverty in America; Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo about poverty in India; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mandel about King Henry VIII; Crossing Purgatory by Gary Schanbacher, about the American frontier in 1858; and the next four are mysteries: Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny; Before the Fall by Noah Hawley; A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee; Ordinary Grace by Willian Kent Krueger.

After the lecture I met a friend for lunch where we talked about topics neither one of us can discuss with most people in our families. She asked if I remember our country ever being this divided that we risk alienating family and friends just by talking about the issues in the news and all I could come up with was during the Vietnam War when younger war protester were pitted against the older generation. But that was only one issue separating people. Now there are a half dozen or more.

We also talked about an acquaintance of mine who just got engaged. She and I were widowed within weeks of each other and this will be her fifth husband--- she divorced her first and buried the others. It boggles my mind, that anyone could get married so many times. Why do people do that? Are they hopelessly optimistic or are they trying to get it right and haven’t made it yet? She’s not marrying for money, she’s well off nor have I ever gotten the impression that’s she lonely or unhappy with her busy life. What is wrong with me that I can’t accept this woman’s happiness on face value? That’s a rhetorical question, idol curiosity because even though I believe you can love more than one person in your lifetime I can’t imagine me falling deeply enough in love to marry five different guys! But none of us likes being judged, we want others to see and believe we are capable of making good choices for ourselves. Even if we are running our choices past good friends, we don’t want them to add their disapproval or drama if, in the end, they disagree with our final decisions. So I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be walking up to this woman and say, “That’s a beautiful engagement ring but are you crazy!?” ©

A Germaphobic's Trip to the Grocery Store

Saturday I figured I was out of the contagious stage of my norovirus or stomach flu---whatever label that correctly applies to having a fourteen hour long episode of vomiting and diarrhea followed by two days of holding the bed mattress down. I hadn’t eaten much since the “event” plus I purged most of the contents of my refrigerator just in case there were germs creeping round inside the deli containers and on the fruits and veggies ready to jump out attack me again. I bleached the heck of that appliance and I disinfected everything I’d touched around the house. I even threw out my lipstick, Chap Stick, toothbrush, lanyard, shower puff, toilet brush, slippers and assorted clothing and I washed all my cloth grocery bags because I’ve heard they’ve been known to be a safe harbor for germs. Call me paranoid but I never want to be that sick again.

I needed a trip to the grocery store. I was out of everything plus I needed some probiotics because Dr. Google said they would help to get my system going again. Before I left, I wiped down everything inside the car that I might have touched before I got sick because I was sure I was fitted with special lens in my glasses that allowed me to see viruses and germs EVERYWHERE. Once at the store I attacked wiping down my shopping cart like it was a metal slab in the morgue. Normally I love grocery shopping and I’ve never been germaphobic there but this time was different. I noticed everything. When I saw an employee spraying cleaner inside an empty meat case I thought, Oh, no! They know they’ve selling viruses and germs with their hamburger!  The food demonstrators who I normally love to chat with seemed like heroin dealers trying to lure me into dark alleys. 

By the time I got to the liquor aisle where they were giving away samples of tequila I was tempted because my nerves needed settling down and I’ve never had tequila. I figured if the old-time doctors could use whiskey to clean out wounds, then alcohol would be safe. As I stood there deciding if I would or wouldn’t a woman my age was badgering the demonstrator to give her more than the half ounce portion he was allowed to serve. I walked away in disgust. Who tries to bully a food demonstrator into giving them more of a controlled substance! Next Up: The bakery section where I was happy they weren't giving out samples because Dr. Google says sugar and dairy are off limits until after the probiotics does its job of building the good bacteria back up in our systems. Too bad because ice cream and cookies sounded better to me than anything else in the world and they’re often featured samples. I’ve never used or took much interest in probiotics before but after several days of post norovirus belly bloating I figured it was worth a try. Trying to force farts wasn’t working and I was about to jab an ice pick in my belly button to let out the air. 

While I was at the store I decided to look for an elbow guard to protect my Popeye’s Elbow. The health and pharmacy department didn’t have any. So off I went to the sports department where I found a shooter’s sleeve apparently used by basketball players that had a padded elbow. It looked like it would help but when I saw the $39.95 price tag I decided I’d Duct Tape an empty pudding cup over my elbow before I’d pay that much. And I do need something. Since I discovered the golf ball sized lump I’ve become aware of how often I lean on my elbow. Like every time I’m sitting in front of the computer screen for starters. I stop typing I lean. I’m reading on the web, I lean. I realized that I’ve been leaning on my left elbow since childhood and I have the photos to prove it. But all was not lost. As I was leaving the sports department I spotted a part of fingerless gloves in the yoga section. (Whichever blogger friend gave me that tip, thanks!) Now I have a nice looking black pair that I could actually wear out in public. The fingerless gloves I live in around the house are an old, ratty red knit pair that are full of pilling no matter how often I use my handy-dandy sweater shaver on them. But my hands feel so much warmer and less arthritic when I’m wearing them. 

Well, that’s all from Black and Blue City. Did I mention that I found a six inch round black and blue mark on my arm and a smaller one on my leg? Apparently when I fell during my fourteen hours in Sickness Hell, I fell pretty hard. I’m lucky I didn’t break any bones. ©