Friends

Friends are the mainstay of life. I can't think of anyone who can function well without some kind of friends, and I'm not just talking about human friends here. Still, it's one of the sad things about getting older is that one by one people lose whole lifetimes every time another friend dies. Mom warned me about this; I don't look forward to that part of my life. On the other hand, if you are like V., the 90-something-year-old with whom I work, you will have sense enough to keep building friendships all your life, with people younger than you. I know I've gone on about V. before, but I find it absolutely amazing that she knows the names of all the children of all the staff members (who have children), she remembers where they live, whether they are married or still in school (and what grade), and what kind of things they are interested in. She asks people questions and listens to the answers. I wonder if she goes home and compiles lists to study; it's the only way I could track all this!

Anyway. I've been thinking about friendship today, having spent several hours IMing with one person with whom I've developed a surprisingly fruitful and gratifying rapport. I've been thinking about friendship all week because of someone whose relationship stands in start contrast to the aforementioned friend. I hasten to add that she is every bit as much of a friend, but it's a very strange friendship. I'll also add that I'm TOTALLY SURE she never reads my blog.

I've know Bella for 22 years. I can pretty much pinpoint it, because she was dating a friend, and he asked me to try on a jacket in 1985 to see if it would fit because he thought we were "about the same size." Uh, no. I don't think we share ANY physical similarities beyond having the same chromosomal makeup. I didn't think so even 22 years ago. The jacket fit. I don't remember if he bought it; I didn't like it, and I didn't think Bella (not her real name) would either.

By the time she got married, two years after Beast and I, she and I had become more acquainted. We share virtually no interests. We had no classes in college together (or did we have one? We might have had Public Relations together...man, I hated that class!). We seemed, at that point and to an extent today, to have divergent moral/ethical codes. Our childhoods were substantially different in virtually every way. Her temperament is 180-degrees opposite mine.

And yet....we are very good friends on a couple of levels. We now share 20 years of memories. We are both moms, with children we totally don't understand, and we know that we can call each other and bitch about our kids with the understanding that we love (all) those kids to the ends of the earth. She is generous in ways that I often forget to acknowledge, and in areas about which I know next to nothing.

Here's an example of how deep our bond is: how many friends' houses can you walk into and just walk to a kitchen cupboard for a glass without asking a) if that's ok, and/or b) where the glasses are? I can't do that in all my family members' houses! Another example: being willing to discipline each others' children in front of each other.

Bella is who I've called during marital and mothering and family crises. I am who she calls when the wheels are coming off her life, as they have done repeatedly over the past couple of years. We are, certainly from the outside, Good Friends.

On the inside, though, I don't feel comfortable with her. I find myself gabbling to fill silences around her, especially on the phone. I always feel like my life is completely out of order when I'm around her. The stuff she gets furious with her husband about...is stuff I do ALL THE TIME! She and Beast share a lot of similarities in the way they think, and I'm fortunate that Beast is MUCH more forgiving of his spouse's idiosyncracies than she is of hers. It makes no sense that I feel this way--out of sorts, stupid, fumbling, disorganized--when it's HER life that is crashing down around her ears constantly.

In short, I don't feel as if we really "know" each other. There are so many-many things I'd like to tell her, but can't because any one of them would implode our relationship. I'm not sure I'd really mind, but I'd miss her kids. The one horrifying thought that permeates my thoughts about Sparky's future is that he will end up marrying Bella's daughter: though I know she totally loves Sparky, being in-laws would be ...trying....

I find her frustrating in the extreme; she's VERY negative, very critical, very pessimistic, and unwilling to apologize or grant any quarter. There is no sense of acceding the possibility that she might, occasionally or more often than that, be wrong, or that other people's points of view or feelings are as valid as her own. Over the years, that has meant that I'm careful not to overtly disagree with her. It's really hard when she asks me why her husband is such a jerk, as she has asked recently, and I have to say, "I dunno." The answer I want to give her, the one Beast and I know, is that she has trained him over their 19 years of marriage to behave that way around her. It's physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. She seems completely unaware of human psychology as applied to herself and her supposed loved ones.

The upside of all of this is that I have learned some things from Bella that I never learned in the hurly-burly of my family: unvoiced thoughts sometimes need to stay that way; a lack of tact just just as hurtful as a sledgehammer (well, I knew that--my family was not exactly blessed with an overabundance of tact), and the hurt lasts far longer; being kind is worth more than being right in the long view. She has also taught me how to be a friend.

Maybe she's my 'practice' friend, and all my other friends are the ones who receive the benefit of what being her friend has taught me.