On Friendship

I'm not very social, outside of a very small circle of friends with a shared past, some here in Chicago and Indiana, some out West, one in Pennsylvania, and several in South Carolina.  I tend to hole up and write in my spare time; my hobbies are singular.  I'm perfectly happy being by myself for days on end.  But it's always interesting when you meet someone in person that you'd only encountered peripherally, seeing them but not really talking to them.  Then you meet and feel like you have been friends for years. 

I met Partner in Grime after we'd been the best of friends online, having met through family and mutual friends.  That switched to lots of long phone calls for a couple of years. One day, I met him in person. However, I would have never, with my scientist's brain, said "love at first sight." But as I waved to him under the fierce August sun, it was as if the earth had released some secret store of its fiery heart, and I think we both knew. Two years later, we were married.

But there is always that bit of uncertainty when you meet someone where you finally have time to exchange more than pleasant banter.  Sometimes, you find you don't have much in common, and part on a kind note, knowing you likely won't talk much again.  Still, there's some sadness there, as you wanted a connection, yet in meeting them, you felt they had such wonderful things in their heart to say, but you couldn’t decipher the words.

And then, sometimes, you are blessed to discover someone whose life stories mirror your own, not just in some shared deeds and events but in how those things made us into the souls we are today. When you have a moment, between family, rescue dogs, and careers, to sit down and share a meal with them, you realize how truly blessed you are.  

As I sat here last night, watching the moonglow seep like liquid into the newly fallen snow and the spreading crowns of trees outside slowly withdraw into the night, I realized that even if I'm alone this week before Christmas, I’m not alone. I have old and new friends who enrich me in ways I can’t articulate, offering with their kindness a tremendous healing balm to those wounds that a lifetime can lay down and a single year can reopen.  

As people who have lived life fully, sometimes recklessly, sometimes isolated by our own accord, we all have had our hearts broken at one time, sometimes more than once. In that brokenness, so many things can enter our hearts - fear, shame, betrayal, anger, hope, faith.  But when gathered in friendship in a room or at a table and saying our prayer of gratitude, there is only acceptance of those bits of those elements of light and dark that find a home in a human heart.  That is our blessing at our own table, just as it's our forgiveness at the Lord's. - Brigid