Tag: friendship

Con Te Partiro

“Time to say goodbye.” The title of one of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli’s most famous and beloved songs.

Our guests leave today after the fastest two week visit in the history of time.

I am convinced they just got here. The mark of a successful visit.

A completely opposite experience to those visitors whose intrusive presence has you praying for them to leave at the earliest possible opportunity.

“Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?”

Such is the gift of old friends who become – in the best possible way – part of the furniture and your everyday environment. That may sound dismissive, but isn’t. It speaks to the comfort level you have in their company.

I once learned an important distinction between how to treat visitors who were welcome in your home and those who were not.

It was phrasing that would allow someone to feel welcome or not.

“How long are you staying?” a visitor would be asked if they were welcome. “When are you leaving?” if they weren’t. Subtle but significant.

The joy of visitors and of friendship is the back and forth of spending time with others with whom you have a shared history.

You can talk with them about things you may not always talk about with new friends. They know you better. You’ve laid a foundation of mutual understanding over many years.

You explore places you might otherwise not explore. You get to share their company on your home turf and the memories are indelibly etched on the history of your home.

Diane and Gerry’s visit christened our house and converted it to a home. What good is it to have wonderful surroundings unless they are shared with friends and loved ones?

Diane and I shopped. We bitched. We decried the current state of politics and the world. We made meals together. We did laundry. We frequently made each other tea. Just like home.

When the boys got into their World War II and John Wayne movies, we hit the patio sofa and lit a fire.

The familiarity of routine behaviors and familiar conversation was a comfort. Albeit thousands of miles away from our original home.

I find old friends become more important as we grow older. To start, none of us know how much longer we are going to have each other. It is not a maudlin cloak draped over the activities of daily living. It is simply an underlying awareness.

In days gone by, friends were an essential part of our extended communities. I am sure that degree of constant familiarity came with its own challenges. But it also provided a cushion of comfort and companionship.

You were never completely alone. There was always someone to go to in a crisis or dire need, whether large or small. Someone to look after the kids if you needed to run to the store. That sense of belonging never left you. Not always a good thing but a constant you could rely on.

So I wish my dear friends well on their travels home. Out of kindness, I will not share the climate they are returning to. The reality of that will hit them both soon enough.

We have made new memories and strengthened an old friendship. That is emotional capital to draw on in the coming months as hubby and I retreat back into the relative quiet and solitude of our daily lives.

Life is a series of beginnings and endings. Stops and starts. Backing and forthing. These are the natural rhythms of life.

We were blessed to have our friends grace us with their presence these past two weeks (which I am entirely convinced was only three days.) We are blessed to have these friends in our lives, period.

There is that in a visit. A reminder of how important and special these friends are to us and in our lives. We will be less for their absence.

Safe travels, buddies. Thanks for coming to see us and bide awhile.

Beautiful Hubbub

I have lived a quiet life in the main.

Living single and celibate during my extended healing phase, I came to love solitude. I loved being on my own. I loved the peace and quiet. I still do.

And yet, a visit with friends is expanding my perspective and experience.

There is a general hubbub afoot. It was really evident while watching the Super Bowl last night.

No riotous reaction to goals scored or lost. No jumping up to dance with Usher during his mesmerizing performance. Even the Kansas City Chiefs last minute overtime win generated only a muted reaction (full disclosure, they were mostly 49ers fans in the room).

But there was hubbub. Comments here and there. A living room full of people. Pizza coming out of the oven and into appreciative bellies. The sound of ice tumbling into glasses and darting out to the washroom.

Hubbub.

Unfamiliar in recollections of my recent adult experience. Pleasant in the extreme. A life goal and wish, in fact, that came with my dreams for the new house.

I pride myself on a certain disdain for televised sports. It is the last resort of armchair ex-athletes reliving their high school glory days. Or so I believed.

I’ll be darned if I didn’t get fully engaged int eh Super Bowl yesterday. Where my intention was to hit the hay after the halftime show, I ended up hanging in there.

I was becoming acquainted with some players and their strongest moves. I watched Taylor Swift and her friends cheering on Swift’s boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

It didn’t take long before I was cheering him on, too. Even if I wasn’t fully sure of what moves it was that I was cheering for. Such is the contagion of passion and enthusiasm.

And all the while, the low-key hubbub of friends in the living room percolating quietly around me. Steady. Lovely.

I have a strong suspicion I will neither be so derogatory nor disinterested when Super Bowl comes around next year.

Not if friends are with me and Taylor Swift is involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reintroduction to the low-key hubbub of socializing with friends. 

It is now not outside the realm of consideration that I might entertain creating such low-key hubbub again in the near future. Even without the Super Bowl.

Friendship Revival

Friends happen.

So after months of disconnection from dear friends from away, I had a whole day of renewed friending. With old friends who are really more like family.

So restorative.

I learned again today it is vital to spend time with friends who have known you since you were little and who still love you.

These friends have seen me at my worst and have celebrated with me during my best times. And I with them when the tables were reversed.

Today I got to hear my dear friend Gerry regale me with stories of our wild and misspent youth on the rocky outcropping into the Atlantic Ocean known as the province of Newfoundland.

He reminded me of places we used to investigate as adolescent adventurers: Fort Amherst, Signal Hill, Fort Pepperell, Quidi Vidi Lake, The Battery and the Gut. Even the names sound reminiscent of another time and place, which, indeed, they were.

Newfoundland is celebrated for its hospitality and the warmth of its people and the general bonhomie that prevails there. Though not born among them, I am proud to be of them by a form of adoption they extend to tolerable “mainlanders.”

In Gerry’s now-muted Newfoundland accent and the laughs that emerged from the depths of his belly on our futile drive around today, we made more memories. I fully expect to be the butt of Gerry’s jokes in the retelling of Gerry’s stories up the road.

Back at home, best friend Diane and hubby Hank got to bond over their mutual concern for our whereabouts. We had texted that we were alive and well. But the new-fangled SIM card that was just installed in her phone wouldn’t play ball.

I miss these days for their infrequency. As we have gotten older and separated by time and distance, it is harder to stay connected.

Which is why refresher visits like this one are absolutely essential.

Friends – especially longterm friends – carry pieces of us around with them. We remember things together. We laugh at the same old jokes. We bathe in the comfort of old stories and updates on other old friends.

It is a profound comfort to have such friends in my life. Still.

With that, I am going to continue to enjoy them for the rest of the evening and for every day that they are here.

I feel very lucky and honored to have known both of them for so well and for so long. Definitely a family of choice.

This is the kind of friendship that money absolutely can’t buy.

And yet, I feel very rich.

Auld Lang Syne

I finally caught up with an old friend last week after a number of false starts. Hung up with mixed feelings.

Full disclosure: I have been under an enormous strain these past few months for a number of reasons. I have lived with a PTSD diagnosis for a long time. Some of the strain in my life has been deeply triggering. I am trying to navigate and resolve those feelings. There doesn’t appear to be a quick fix.

Here’s how triggered PTSD manifests in me: I talk my fool head off and mostly about me. I can’t fully explain why I do that or what that feels like. It is as if I am fighting for my life. It feels like I MUST make my position and feelings known and clear to whoever I am talking to. I desperately seek validation and reassurance.

That is compounded as I am terrified of not being heard. I am terrified that some crisis will happen because I didn’t warn someone strongly enough about what I see is about to happen. Not that I have ultimately been listened to anyway. To the listener, of course, it comes off as self-absorbed poppycock.

The listener isn’t wrong. Especially when they have no idea of the strain you are under or have been out of your life for a while. Life intervenes. Stuff happens.

So it was an odd phone call where the dynamic quickly shifted from “girls catching up.” She transitioned into “counsellor” mode and I was relegated to being “the patient.” It felt icky.

No doubt it was discomfiting on her part to engage in a phone call you thought would be a cheer-filled catchup only to find you are faced by a barrage of well-worn, existential complaints. And not for the first time.

I have had to navigate this dichotomy my whole life. Raised without solid boundaries or a clear and solid sense of self, I have erred on the boundary crashing front in extremis. I have had to identify and learn for myself what most of my peers picked up just by living at home.

Nowhere has this been more troublesome than in intimate relationships. I used to have a no-fail relationship management strategy. Before things got too close and intimate, I’d blow the relationship up. I’d break it off or create an irresolvable situation. By so doing, I was able to keep the pain of self-disclosure and exposure at bay for years. Sure, it was lonely. but it worked.

So I am on the phone with this old friend and desperately hoping she can sense and hear my pain and I spew my inflamed and irritated feelings all over the conversation. In a healthy and reasonable response, she backs off, shuts down and changes gear.

I am no longer the “old friend.” I am the supplicant. A problem to be solved. An object of pity and sadness. The Margot that drives her crazy. I gotta tell ya, that summary sucks.

And yet I clearly see how we have evolved into this place. We have hardly talked but a few times to catch up in recent months (years?). She has walked with me through a dozen major and minor crises in my life (largely self-created) over several decades. Her comparatively stable upbringing is the calm and centering counterpoint to my chaotic upbringing.

But I am a peripheral friend. An artifact of our college days. Outside her core of sensible and compatible friends who are calm and centered like she is. She has been a good friend nonetheless but time is having its way with us.

No longer the easy and familiar camaraderie. No longer the unspoken understandings that write the shorthand of longtime familiarity. Not much idea either of what is going in each other or in our lives that makes conversation fluid and empathetic.

I’m not grieving exactly. Our friendship is not finished. I am having to adjust to how it has altered. And why it has altered. My self-absorption and rumination would be part of it. But also our lives have changed in ways neither of us can fully appreciate. How could we? We haven’t seen each other face-to-face for years.

The loci of her life and of mine have separately shifted to the point of being unrecognizable to each other. I have not visited or even seen the new house she and her husband moved in to over two years ago. Even members of a kaffeeklatsch are more intimate.

I love her dearly and have always been profoundly grateful to have her in my life. But there have been periods of strain between us (some longer than others). Sometimes I marveled that the friendship held up at all.

i’ve always harbored the nagging feeling of being on the rim of her life as something of an interesting oddity. But trusting she found me bright and engaging enough to make a continued friendship worthwhile.

We talked about the weirdness of our last phone call. She found it weird, too. She identified an old and objectionable pattern in me where negative emotions took me over and ruled the day. I will try not to make that mistake again.

She is to be forgiven for not wanting to tolerate how pain manifests in me as it can be contagious. And it’s pretty self-absorbed. She likely has no idea how humiliating and upsetting it is to know my childhood deficiencies still manifest inappropriately.

I was heartened a year or two ago when she sent me something of a personal manifesto in an email. She wrote about carving out her own space and reclaiming her soul after a life devoted to serving others. She wanted to figure out how she wants to be and what she wants to keep in her life moving forward. Right on, said I.

My old saw: nothing in life is constant but change. She is now a long-married, happily retired professional woman who gallivants about North America and the world in her retirement while she and her husband still can. I am happy for them. It is a well-deserved coda to a good woman’s life.

Our friendship will continue. Most probably not apace. I received no signals that I’ve been kicked to the proverbial curb (yet!) in her emotional and psychic sorting process. I will try to be more careful and considerate in times of personal stress and strain. She is quite right. She doesn’t need that in her life.

It is an old and valuable friendship that has been through many shared experiences and challenges. The friendship is still there and still valuable. It has simply changed. Which was inevitable and up to me to adjust to. I’m learning the adjustments just keep on coming as we spend more time on the planet. Such is life.

Love you, old friend.

Turning Point

How I love early mornings. Around 6 AM is ideal. This sacred state can usually last up until somewhere close to 8 AM.

I love the birdsong behind our house. We have a scruffy patch of untouched forest where committees of birds consort every morning to plot and plant their day. Or so it seems.

Lately, a murder of crows has taken up residence in the remaining live oaks behind us. I don’t actually know how large a group of crows has to be to be a “murder” but there is a bunch.

Straight out of birdworld central casting, they caw incessantly. Sometimes in unison and at other times, a single crow with a particularly large and booming caw rings out over the others.

The crows occasionally fly away in unison on whatever mission they have decided is necessary. I am struck by how little I know about birds as I listen to them and watch their aeronautic displays. It piques my curiosity.

I love early morning when it is quiet and the only voice I have to listen to is the voice in my own head. Uninterrupted by abrasive external distractions, I can enjoy my own sense of peace and calm.

I hear garbage trucks way off in the distance. A small aircraft buzzes by overhead. There is traffic way, way off in the distance. Soon cars will start up around me as neighbors head off to their jobs. I am no longer part of that morning migration and I am so grateful that is so.

Yesterday, I wrote what was for me a fairly disturbing post about an art installation replicating our collective Sisyphean task of chasing money to sustain our lives with increasingly diminishing returns until we die. I used to be acutely aware that there was an inherently unbalanced tradeoff between time and money in my life and that of others.

When I had enough free time to pursue personal interests, I rarely had enough money to freely do so. When I was employed and earning money, the time I needed to pursue personal interests was eliminated. A devil’s bargain.

I am at a stage where I am resetting my goals. I am no longer convinced I will write the Great North American novel or bank countless millions with which to address the world’s ills. In truth, I never really had those goals but, at least when I was younger, they seemed attainable. Of course, almost everything seems possible when you are young.

I have come to one simple conclusion for my future direction. My life, my rules. I fervently pray (and hopefully believe) I will never have to work at a boring and unfulfilling job again. I grieve for the people that do. I grieve that I had to for so long.

I will no longer “dress to impress” anonymous others whom I hope may look kindly upon me and bestow some favor or another – financial or emotional.

I will no longer be silent or cagey in the face of outrageous circumstances. Strategic maybe, but not cagey. Life has taught me the truth of that you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar … if it is flies that you are out to attract, of course. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine why one would.

This is a time of transition in my life unlike so many other transitions that preceded it. Life used to feel like having a bolt of fabric from which you could endlessly pick patterns and play with design and create costumes ad infinitum. Now I know the bolt of cloth I was handed is not infinite. Going forward, I must pick and choose the patterns and designs much more carefully and wisely.

Even these thoughts about my future are just forming. So much that used to drive my ambition and thinking has ebbed away. I am not as angry or tortured as I once was. I am wiser. I have made immutable choices in career, children and partner which have created a clearly boundaried paddock within which I will live out the rest of my life. Best make it the best it can be for me and my loved ones.

Dangers abound on the road ahead [like they always did] but so does adventure. And learning. And friendship. Blessed friendship. There are so many people without whom I would not be here today.

It is the harvest time in my life. To reflect on where I’ve been more deeply than where I’m going. To appreciate what went right and forgive myself and others for what went wrong. And for the most part, most of it no longer matters.

In a hundred years, it will matter to no one, except in one way. The external dragons and internal demons I’ve slayed will be a lesser threat to my children and theirs and the children of my great grandchildren ad inifinitum. I hope.

Knowing this in my bones has, if for no other reason, made all of the struggle worthwhile.

Change Happens

Today I had the kind of day I recently wrote about. I wrote about the Chinese farmer whose stallion ran away. What his neighbors initially thought was very bad news, soon became good news in their eyes. The stallion eventually returned bringing several wild mares with him. The new mares substantially increased the farmer’s wealth.

That story contains a wise lesson about perspective as it demonstrates a back and forth that can happen between “bad news” and “good news.” Is it really one or the other? It depends.

So “bad news” happened to us today. We woke up this morning to the sound of bulldozers and brush being cut nearby. I unraveled inside. The lot beside the lot behind our house was being razed. We only recently bought this house based in large part on the “back forty” behind us which is full of trees and bushes. It is essentially a forest.

The prospect of seeing this forest disappear before we’d even had time to enjoy it caused my stomach to turn and my heart to drop into my stomach. The dream we had for our home and cozy, private surroundings was falling apart before my eyes.

I did what I usually do in a crisis. I went into crisis management mode. “What can I actually control in this situation?” The bush whacking was happening. The trees were coming down. Outside my control.

What was in my control was information gathering. Who was building? What are they building? What is the plan for the “natural forest” in our backyard? My mind was racing. Would it all be ravaged and cut down to make way for a bunch of new houses?

First, I called the county property assessment office. I found out who owned the lot. I researched the adjoining lots. Different owner. Still the distressing niggle: is there a development going in back there?

Then I called the president of our homeowners’ association. What does he know about what is being built there? How could he help? Could he help? Would he help? All big question marks.

I finally found the name of the new owners on the county property assessors website. But no phone number. No email address. Just a street address. About a fifteen minute drive away from here. I jumped in my car and fired up the GPS.

I turned off the main highway and down a twisty road. One more turn and I landed in what I thought was the address I was looking for. No number on the house though. I was initially wary of the dog on the front porch. That was until I saw him wagging his tail so hard I thought he would fall over.

Encouraged, I braved the porch. My hands and legs were promptly and enthusiastically licked nearly to death. By, I later learned, Groot the dog. A love hound if ever there was one.

The nanny who met me at the door confirmed that her employers were indeed the owners of the lot and they were planning to build a house behind our house. Sigh. I gave her my name and address and phone number and email address and what I hoped was a cheerful note to the impending house builders.

Back at home, I comforted myself I had done all I could do and learned all that could for the day. I resigned myself to the uncertainty and started licking my wounds, inspired by Groot.

A couple of hours later, our insipid front door bell rang. (I really must do something about that.) Acting on the note I had left with the nanny, the builder/homeowner came directly to see us at the end of his workday. The stallion brought several mares back with him.

A standup guy. Concerned about some of the same things we are, specifically, taking down trees. Losing the “natural” vibe. We talked mitigation strategies to make up for our compromised view. Vibernum vines. Night-blooming jasmine. He even wants to do extra planting before the building begins. To give it a head start.

We shot the breeze for awhile. Found out where he came from. What his wife does for a living. The names of their two kids. And, of course, I reported on my near-death licking experience with the dog I then learned was known as Groot. His owner grinned. “He’s full of love.”

Look, if I could, I would revert to what we had yesterday. An unfettered view of natural overgrowth and old oak trees. The endless peace and the quiet. But in a nod to the inevitability of change, our new neighbor made all the right and wise moves.

Showing up immediately as he did and being as concerned about as many things as we are went a long way to soothing our distress over the impaired view.

In only a few moments, it felt like a friendship and alliance was made. The day ended much happier than it began. With a minimum of hand-wringing and drama. If change is inevitable, today was a master class for me in how to handle it. I look forward to meeting the mares.

Build on, Macduff!