Befriended 2

A good friend recently sent me a New York Times Style Magazine which was dedicated to the idea of friendship. There were thirty-two categories of friends. Some were somewhat silly to me like actor friends which could as well have been singer friends or electrician friends or doctor friends, you get my drift, or friends who summer together or furry friends, as in a dog is a man’s best friend, although in this case it was a cat. (I suppose a bird, or a turtle is not considered a friend since there is limited interaction.)  Some categories I found more interesting, such as long-distance friends, friends who are muses, and friends who inspire each other. It was actually a sweet idea emerging out of these Covid times when we are more aware than ever of the friends we have, or, I suppose, don’t have. 

I began to do as my friend had done with me, check off the kinds of friendships I shared with some of my closest friends, there was my longest time friend who was also a best friend (yes I have more than one best friend, I have besties) who was also an old friend and a friend with whom I came up together with, a school friend (if college is still considered school) and a party friend, a go out with friend with a friendship where we teach other and cook together as friends who share a language. She is a hometown friend, although San Francisco is more city than town, and we are friends who protect each other. Once we were work friends, she is now retired, and I moved onto my writing and teaching career. Over the years we have been friends who miss each other, friends who inspire each other and friends who protect each other. Although we have family with whom we are friends we have also become friends who are family. And we are definitely friends who have seen it all. Yes, we fit into half of the magazine’s categories. That may be due, in part, to the fact that we’ve been friends for over fifty years.

Some friendship categories were omitted, like friends who co-parent, like my friend who visited me today and like the first friend I mentioned, and also, like my friend above, friends who share celebrations and crises to name two more of the many ways to define the friendship cake. Friends who always show up when needed was implied and friends who always tell you what you need to hear came up in one essay although they are major facets of my small, tight, and durable circle of friends. What I realized while reading each expression of a kind of cloistered friendship was that my friendships, like the way I colored when I was a child, were messy and expansive and did not stay in the lines. They have sustained me when I could barely sustain myself and enriched me so that even when I was close to penniless and more than worried about how I could keep the lights on, I knew I was incredibly wealthy because of their love.  And that was the one word rarely seen in these entertaining friendship essays, the fact that most of the friendships I share have love braided throughout them and/or stand on it as a sturdy foundation. 

So, all of this is a wordy thank you to my friends, most of whom have been friends with me for decades, who forgive my faults and acknowledge my efforts to be more than decent and present as needed and not take the easy way out.  It is an appreciation for them calling or dropping by, bringing food or flowers when I was under the weather, or even when I was not just to make my life a bit brighter or a little easier. It is a brief love letter to my friends who have laughed with me and cried with me, and not denying all the important works of my ancestors and biological family to whom I am forever indebted and with whom I am deeply in love, my friends are a part of, as poet Carolyn Rodgers has written, how I got ovah and how I continue to get by. Thank you each and thank you all for being my friends and letting me be yours.