FRIENDSHIP

[This essay first appeared about four years ago. Lately, though, I've been thinking about friendship--how important it is for our well-being--so I decided to repeat these thoughts in preparation for a celebration, however, quiet, of Friendship.]

I should wait a week to write about friendship—August 7 is friendship day.

But the subject has been on my mind and heart lately and I want to explore some definitions and thoughts on what friendship is, and what it is to have—or to be—a friend.

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The most elemental definition I’ve ever seen is the title of Joan Walsh Anglund’s book, A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You. It was published in 1958 for children 4 to 7 years old. A friend is…someone who likes you. Simple. Direct. Easy to understand.

But as we all know, we grow older, and life takes twists and turns, our experiences cause us to make leaps and bounds. Or go backward. Or fall on our prats. Sometimes what we go through is, well, less than joyful. Here are some thoughts to keep your hearts and minds engaged in friendly paths as you find your way through the jungle.

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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.   --C. S. Lewis (1898-1967)

Who among us has not had a friend who kept us sane, even for a little while? Or who held our hand in a dark time? Who talked us down from a scary place—real or metaphorical—to continue living?

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Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.   --Octavia Butler (1947-2006)

If you have a friend, then you, yourself, are a friend. It’s a reciprocal relationship, not one-sided, but a meeting of equals. So if you are a friend, you know what it means to remain silent when they “hurl themselves into their own destiny.” Sounds scary, doesn’t it? But we know we can’t live other people’s lives for them, no matter how much we care, how much more experience we have, how clearly we can see the pitfalls they will face. We can “prepare to pick up the pieces,” and I would add, resist the temptation to say I told you so. Even if you never said it in the first place.

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One more idea:

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.  -- Joseph Roux (French surgeon, 1780-1854)

Ignore the out-of-date pronouns and focus on the thought.

No one wants to lose a friend. Friends are more precious than silver and gold, than perfect gems, than all the possessions we can ever amass.

Yet, sometimes a friend is lost. To death, yes; but that is not the harshest loss. The loss that stabs our hearts and wrenches tears from our souls is the loss we have caused—or have been unable to prevent—for whatever reason.

John Donne (1572-1631) wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me.” I would add, “Each friend’s loss takes a valuable part of me, and I’ll never regain it.”

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To send you off with a happier thought:

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.  --George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Celebrate your friendships. They may not number in the hundreds or thousands, they may not be virtual friends you’ve never seen. True friends are the ones who know you, warts and all . . . .

  HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

[Changes in our lives during a time of pandemic have nudged me to think about home. Many people who formerly left home to go to work no longer have to do so. Those of us who are retired spend, I suspect, a large amount of time in the place where we live. So--what makes a home? Where is home? Here are my thoughts from a few years back.]

"Home is where the heart is."

Know who said that?

Pliny the Elder, Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher. Born 1st Century AD.

I don't know the occasion of his pronouncement, but it's become a cliché in our time. Like most clichés, it's true.

Consider the following:

• In my first 20 years on Earth, I moved from one abode to another 17 times.
• During those moves, I lived in houses, apartments, and one time a remodeled gas station.
• Our moves took us from small town to country, to larger town, to city, to country again, and back to small town.
• I lived in five different states of the Union, all of them in the Midwest

For a number of years, during these moves, my home was where my mother was. When I was 15, my mother died--so that anchor was gone from my life.

After that my sense of home--not as a place but as an attachment--underwent several incarnations. I married, had children, and began making a home for them. (In those days, wives/moms were able to stay home and be with the children, being homemakers in the literal sense of the word.) Like many new parents, I tried to give my children what I didn't have as a kid--a house they could call home, freedom to explore, and permission to keep every blessed thing they wanted to. It helped that the first house we bought was a four-bedroom, two-story square frame house, with large rooms, a basement, and an airing porch on the back. Plus a big back yard, fenced in, and room for a dog and a cat (or two--they don't seem to come in singles for this family), plus a neighborhood full of friends to play with, go to school with, and get in trouble with.

When the children were in school and I had free time during the day, I went back to college to finish my degree. I made friends there who have lasted through the years into retirement. They've become part of my family--and though we aren't close geographically, we are close in the best way of all--we're at home with each other whenever we meet.

I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests.
Yo-Yo Ma

I can't show you pictures of my homes--there were too many down through the years. The one I live in now is a three-bedroom ranch, like the houses my father built most of his life. My town's population is around 12,000, and it's the county seat.

For a number of years my oldest daughter and I went back to our hometown to visit my aunt and several first cousins. One July we attended a family reunion, on the 100th anniversary of my maternal grandparents' wedding. After a life of nearly perpetual moving around, I felt quite grounded in the park that day--I was related to all these people, and so was my daughter. We belonged.

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The most important thing is this: I've been in this house, in my small city, over 30 years. I've found a physical place to call home. But if I had to leave, I could. Home, I've learned, is a concept--and I carry its picture in my heart.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

DIY AND SELF-HELP

If you lived through The Great Depression (1929-1941, approximately), you have a working knowledge of DIY (Do It Yourself). That working knowledge has very likely been with you all your life.

Think about it: unless you have a bevy of servants and hired help doing everything for you, some parts of your life have to be done by--guess who?--YOU. That's Do It Yourself, at its simplest.

Nowadays, DIY refers to all those things we used to hire done: plumbing, wiring, landscaping, housework (including dusting), cooking, auto mechanics (oil changes and such), laundry and ironing (yes, Virginia, some folks still iron clothing and other items). Okay. That's enough listing.

I have to confess: I did not live through the Depression. But my parents did, and my aunts and uncles, some of my older cousins, and my grandparents. So those who grew up in the time I did can call ourselves Second Generation Depression Survivors. We were given a front-row seat in the drama of doing things ourselves--making Life work, making do or doing without, finding answers to questions we never thought we'd ask. 

Such as: how can I have a new dress for Easter/the prom/my wedding? In the so-called Good Old Days (when it seemed everybody had money to spend), I would go to the Best Dress Shop, find a nice lady pleased to help me spend oodles of boodle on the absolutely most divine dress for my special day.

Once DIY set in, my options were limited: wear something I already had (unsuitable)--borrow something from a friend (I had no sisters)--not go to the event (unthinkable)--make it myself (my mother didn't sew). So, you guessed it, I did it myself--made my own dress (with new fabric, not salvaged from something in the attic), and wore it, wonky seams and all.

That was during my teen years. Once I'd learned to sew in 4-H, I bought fewer clothes; good thing, too, because I had a very limited allowance, no job during high school, and no rich auntie to "help out" when I needed cash.

[Aside: I won't claim that all this deprivation made me a better person. It did make me a more careful person. After all, if I spent my money on something that didn't last, there was no more money to spend on a better item to replace it.]

You get the idea.

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Next: enter Self-Help. Books, magazines, newspaper articles--and later on, TV shows. (Nowadays it's YouTube and podcasts.) 

You could find out how to do absolutely anything you ever wanted or needed to know. Self-Help, though, unlike DIY, tended to gear itself more toward relationship issues--so if I looked hard enough, I could find out:

• how to make friends
• how to get along with siblings (never had to buy that one)
• how to become more confident
• how to be a good leader
• how to play bridge--and win (never read that one either)
• how to study
• how to improve memory skills

On and on. The how-to books are still being sold: how to write (you name the kind), how to paint (something or other), how to play the piano/violin/zither/kazoo . . . the whole point being--are you ready?--you can Do It Yourself! No teacher necessary. Sit there on your overstuffed sofa and learn anything!

During this continuing time of isolation/shutdown/anxiety & panic, some folks will thrive merely because they can learn to do something, or learn about something, and can keep on keeping on. No teachers necessary. No going outside the house and risk being exposed to a virus. Just turn on the computer and fire up YouTube. Or plug in your ear buds and find the podcast that suits you.

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Like my friend Liz Flaherty, I do love full-circle stories. The ending flows perfectly from the beginning. But in this case, I'm not completely sold on the idea that DIY and Self-Help are the way to go. But they're great support systems, when we don't have other options.

Fortunately, DIY has gone 'WAY beyond guys surrounded by every hand-held tool available at Home Depot and gals beavering away at their sewing machines. DIY has long been a part of school classrooms--if you want to see just how far we've come, do a search on DIY Clip Art and see what comes up. (Prepare to be amazed.)

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Even in this isolationist time, due to COVID, learning still goes on--virtually, often, but there's a teacher there, in most cases, leading a class. Even introverts like me want to see someone demonstrating a skill or at least speaking (always seems like he/she is speaking to me, personally). 

Bottom line: We need each other. 

I don't want to abolish DIY or Self-Help. They're lifelines sometimes. They call on our creative natures to get into the act. If you can do it yourself or find a place to explain how it's done, you won't give up. Sometimes, that's enough. But don't forget, another person can help, too.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

DIY Pizza, anyone?

 RAINY DAYS

[I'm repeating this post because, dagnabbit it, it's raining! Again!!]

In my little corner of the world, April showers bring May showers. [And, apparently, June showers and July showers and ....]

Pick a week--any week--and I'll tell you we had at least three, maybe four, straight days of rain.

So--when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right?

We got rain. We're gonna do rain today.

Here we go: RAIN SONGS:

Note to self: Buy cute boots today.

     Singin' in the Rain

     Rainy Days and Mondays

     Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

Thank you, Pollyanna, for positive thoughts.

     Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

     Come Rain or Come Shine

     I Get the Blues When it Rains

Advice from a naturalist

     September (in the Rain)

Worth thinking about

     Rainy Night in Georgia
     Rain, Rain, Go Away

     Cats don't sing much (I'm told), so no songs.
     But this is a strong statement about faith, dontcha
     think?

When all else fails, make a cuppa something hot and bring out the books. Or movies. Or board games. Or . . . .

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Enjoy your rainy days--whether they come in bunches or are few and far between. And while you're at it, sing a song or two. For those who can't carry a tune in a locked trunk (you know who you are), don't fret--you'll probably be alone anyway.