Friendship

I hope we all remember to nurture our friendships, especially those that challenge us.

A few weeks ago, I found a towel that said, "We've Been Friends For So Long, I Can't Remember Which One Of Us Is The Bad Influence."  As I was pondering whether to get this for my friend, my mom just blurted out, "You are getting that for her, right?".  She saw the towel and had immediately thought of the same friend I was thinking of.

Sometimes, I think of us like the characters in the Bette Middler movie, Beaches.  I might be a little more Bette Midler and she might be a little more the other character, but we might also split that a little even.  I'm more conservative, she's more liberal.  I'm religious, she's secular.  I'm barely over 5 feet, she's closer to 6.  It took me 72,000 steps to finish our marathon, it took her 55,000.  I'm a married family woman, she's single.

In college, she helped me with her editing skills.  As my husband can attest, my grammar probably would have had me failed out of many classes if it hadn't been for her help.  I helped her not burn the house down.  She didn't know how to cook even macaroni and cheese at that time (she is now something close to a gourmet cook through many years of practice).  We met because of her old roommate that neither one of us has talked to in over 20 years, by chance.

I still remember her being mortified when a socialist professor of ours said, "Aah, my 2 liberals," as we left a party at his house.  She responded to him, "You do know what she believes, right?".  He replied, "No, I'm not talking about party affiliation, I'm talking about people who think outside the box."  She was there with me when I was crazy enough to take a Marxism class with a former Marxist Black Panther.  She thought I was flirting with disaster.  I naively responded, "Well, if I have to learn about it, I want to learn about it with someone who actually believed it."  Her jaw dropped when in that class I had the further cajones to say that some people said the Civil War was more than about slavery and also about states' rights.  My professor fortunately respected that I had the bravery to say this.

But instead of the "wind beneath my wings" she probably thinks I'm the blisters beneath her feet.  I'm the one who recruited her to come down from New England and run another marathon with me.

After finishing our marathon and eating a much earned wonderful meal by my husband, my friend looks at me as if she was just struck with a new realization, "This was your fault, you are the one who got me to do this crazy thing."  She was ultimately happy that I challenged her, and it was an excuse for us to get together and bond, but she experienced the travails of the marathon just like I did.

While I joked with her about doing a "Tough Mudder" as our next endeavor, she firmly stated that a "Spa Weekend" would be our next excursion.

She asked my husband if he could think of anything the two of us had in common.  He had a blank look.  I didn't realize how much this bothered her until the next day when she said, "I can't believe he couldn't think of anything we shared in common."  I reminded her that this is the same wonderful man who was engaged to me and couldn't remember what eye color I had; being observant wasn't really his greatest skill.

We dabbled in the topics of religion and politics a little and then we stepped back.  We have worked out a rhythm of about how much we can dialogue before it no longer becomes dialogue.  As we were spending time together I turned to her and said, "I think I know what we have in common; we are generous with each other and others and we like to think the best of people."  We are idealists and though some of our moral values are not the same, we know we are both trying to be the best people we can be.  We ask questions of each other without insulting the other.

In a world of polarization, it makes a big difference if we are trying to understand each other or convert one another.  Our friendship is one of conversion, not of each other, but of ourselves.  We hold each other accountable to be the best they can be.  We are not always diplomatic with each other (both of us have abruptly laid the truth out for each other when it comes to relationships).  She's my friend who told me, "He's too hot for you" about a boyfriend and she turned out to be right.  He was not my type.

Sometimes, joys come in friendships not over common interest, but over common good.  Sometimes, we are called to engage with those who aren't in our "sphere" of likes and dislikes.  Our society is becoming more and more polarized and it is easier for us all to judge and separate and label and think of "other" as someone separate and not someone we need or choose to have a relationship with, but whether it's our family, friend or acquaintance,  it's great to see and try to understand the "other".  Even if I see her through eyes of faith, and she sees me through the eyes of a humanitarian, we can still see each other as sisters in humanity and friends.