MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THOUGHTS ABOUT FRIENDS

In fits and starts I have been writing my memoirs in hope that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will know more about my life and times than I know about the lives of my forbears. I’m not sure why I think it is important that I do this, but my kids think it’s important, so I tell myself I’m doing it for them.

I made a list of the people about whom I wanted to say something in this immortal tome I am giving birth to. A few are in the rich and famous category. Name dropping is one of my favorite ego trips.

But most of the people whose friendship has enriched my life are neither rich nor famous. They made their bucks the hard way and spend them carefully. Their names have never been a household word in more than a handful of households other than their own.

And mine.

There are a lot of them! I was surprised, because I tend to encase myself in an invisible barrier and don’t let many people really in. I’m not sure I really like you and I’m pretty sure you won’t really like me if you get too close.

My list of very-important-people-you-never-heard-of runs nearly two pages single spaced. Some of us go waaay back. Some have crossed the great divide, many are still around and we touch base now and then. A few are new and I won’t live long enough for them to become “old friends”, but their newness doesn’t diminish their dearness. I doubt that it occurs to any of them that I am sitting in my cluttered little cave at 2:00 a.m. thinking about them.

But I am.

I talked to one of those old friends today, one with whom I once spent more time than with my own family, shared some hairy moments and some hilarious ones. When either of us had a problem we couldn’t get on top of, or a happiness we couldn’t wait to tell, we got hold of each other ASAP. That half hour phone conversation across a continent cast a bright glow onto my day that’s still there. I hope it hangs around for a while.

Of course there are degrees of friendship, of closeness and intimacy and sharing and compatibility. You never feel exactly the same about any two friends, like you never feel exactly the same about any of your children.

But I can make an accurate generalization about all of them.

They know me.

The verb “to know” is not about a cognitive awareness, like I know today is Tuesday. Not to get too indelicate here, the Hebrew verb “to know” was a 15th century bible translator’s euphemism for sexual intercourse.

That kind of knowing means nothing important is hidden, it’s a kind of non-physical intimate interaction characterized by open sharing of each other’s basic humanness. My friends know me and love me and let me know it, let me feel it. They love me despite the unlovely things they know about me.

With them I can be myself. Well, within limits. Sometimes I can’t stand to be myself around myself.

No pretense. No fakeness. No trying to impress. No carefully chosen words or shaded meanings to avoid offense. With those who know me, offense is taken only when offense is intended. No cautious guarding against being hurt. It is not unbreakable, but it is tough. Even when there is tension between us we know it will not likely be permanent, or fatal. I give them me and they give me themselves, and with this we are content.

What freedom!

I miss them when I am not with them. I miss their honest “I don’t know” when I am surrounded by those who have all the answers and give them out, bidden or not. I miss them when I have to hang around people in a polite, conforming, shallow nothingness.

Even when we are apart, we are not really separated. When we make contact again we take up where we left off, with no awkwardness, no dancing around to find new feelings which may have cropped up between us.

This column has gone more slowly than usual, writing time was interspersed with remembering time.

It’s time to hit the send button. The glow is still there.

©2012 Jack Wilson