Do We Take Friendship for Granted?

We stood, facing each other in our black gowns and mortarboards outside Philips Hall, that Gothic-style building whose red-velvet-seated auditorium we knew well.

“Let’s stay in touch,” she said, handing me her address.

Surprised, I took the slip of paper. “Sure.”

Lisa and I had met while waiting to audition for West Chester State College’s School of Music, she on flute, I on clarinet. (I was accepted as a piano major, she as a bassoon major.) We became friends in the way classmates do, through regular interaction in classes and ensembles, in the halls. We each joined Sigma Alpha Iota, a women’s music fraternity (yes, fraternity, to highlight that this was not a social club) and eventually served as officers together. Yet for all that, I never felt that we were close. Still…

I really tried to correspond regularly but my efforts were repressed by an assumption and by another, well-meaning, letter-writer. Grandma McIntosh who wrote me pages and pages would include some version of “I wish you’d write more often” in each of her letters. This undid me. I hadn’t yet realized that we all think our lives are ordinary. No one would want to read about my life. Even when living in New Mexico teaching Navajo youth, a place and a situation completely unfamiliar to most, I’d lament, “I have nothing to say!”

Lisa and I wrote back and forth for six or seven years. Her letters were prompt and full of newsy bits while I struggled to fill a page and a half (again not realizing that what I deemed ordinary would make good stories for someone living in New Jersey with a husband and three daughters). Eventually I received a “Dear Jayneann” letter: She needed a friend who made the effort to connect regularly and she was cutting me off.

As an adult, I’ve had friendships in tae kwon do class or with colleagues but none of them were close. (It’s no one’s fault; this is simply part of how I function. I take a l-o-n-g time to connect.) Not really understanding what close friendship is, I would listen longingly as others spoke of doing things together and about the friends who were always there for them.

This is the backdrop for my question:

Do you realize how truly amazing it is to have a friend?!

Researchers indicate that whatever happens in our lives, however wonderful or terrible the event, we will soon revert to our previous happiness set-point. You could win the lottery, lose the love of your life (or find them), travel the world for a year. In the end you'd be no happier or sadder than you were before it occurred. I have no reason to doubt this so I suspect that those of you with close friends seldom consider how truly blessed you are.

How do I know you’re blessed? Because I have a friend. And when I pause to consider our friendship I am blown away. This friend dropped everything to take me to and sit with me in the emergency room after I broke my foot last year. We hang out, talk and laugh together, hike or snowshoe… My friend tells me when I have food in my teeth and also that this thing that I do, this habit, is annoying. Wow…

Later this month, the two of us will head to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area. I’ve wanted to visit there since hearing four years ago about endless lakes and meteor showers and old-growth red pines. Blueberries will be ripe. (Hopefully the bears will share.) The BWCWA is a designated Dark Sky Place and I look forward to seeing the night sky well again. The Milky Way. The Perseid meteor shower.

I’ve been lifting baby-weights to strengthen my shoulders. I’m uncertain about my stamina but we have no agenda so when the tick-disease-induced fatigue surfaces we’ll slow down. I’ve been tenting for as long as I can remember. And although I’d done almost no canoeing until recently I really enjoy it. Wild places nourish my spirit.

Soon, we’ll load up the Prius, head out and… the adventure will continue. I intend to return with great memories!

I'm taking a break for a couple weeks but I’ll be back after that. See you then!